Claire Doran
Physics 212
March 21, 2005
University of Alaska Fairbanks
In the US, heart attacks kill more people than any other single cause. Many of the deaths are caused by electrical disturbances in a damaged heart that cause it to fibrillate (Pool). Despite current overwhelming interest in the operations of the human heart, for most of history the human heart has been regarded as a "forbidden organ too delicate to tamper with" (NOVA). In fact, it might have remained so, were it not for World War II where military doctors, faced with massive numbers of injuries ushered the world into our current medical trajectory.
Your body has about 5.6 liters of blood. All of this blood circulates through the body three times every minute. In one day, the blood travels a total of 12,000 miles (NOVA). Rhythmic contractions of the heart pump blood occur in response to electrical control pulse sequences. Active cells in the sinoatrial node in the heart trigger a sequence of electrical events that control muscle contractions, which pump the blood.