Question: When you breathe, a muscle (called the diaphragm) reduces the pressure around your lungs and they expand to fill with air. The table shows the
When you breathe, a muscle (called the diaphragm) reduces the pressure around your lungs and they expand to fill with air. The table shows the volume of a lung as a function of the reduction in pressure from the diaphragm. Pulmonologists (lung doctors) define the compliance of the lung as the derivative of this function.
(a) What are the units of compliance?
(b) Estimate the maximum compliance of the lung.
(c) Explain why the compliance gets small when the lung is nearly full (around 1 liter).

Pressure reduction (cm of water) 0 5 228385 10 15 20 30 Volume (liters) 0.20 0.29 0.49 0.70 0.86 0.95 1.00
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a The units of compliance are units of volume per units of pressure or liters per centim... View full answer
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