The Skeletal System

The Skeletal System provides us with many important functions. It provides us with the shape and form for our bodies as well as supporting, protecting, allowing our body to move freely, producing blood for the body, and storing minerals. The Skeletal System is the system of our body that gives our body its physical shape and with the help of the Muscular System it keeps us moving and makes us able to do tasks that we don't think about like raising our leg to kick a football or using our legs to boost us into the air to spoil the mark. The Skeletal System works directly with the help of the skeletal system which would explain why it is often referred to as the muscular-skeletal System. The average adult skeleton has 206 bones that are joined up with ligaments and tendons to make a protective and supportive framework for the muscles and the soft tissues which lie underneath it. The 206 bones form a rigid framework that the softer tissues and organs of the body are attached to, the vital organs are also protected by the Skeletal System, the brain is protected by the skull just like the heart and lungs are protected by the sternum and rib cage.
The skeleton has two main parts: The Axial Skeleton and The Appendicular Skeleton, The Axial Skeleton contains the skull, spine, ribs and the sternum (which is the breastbone) and includes another 80 bones. The Appendicular Skeleton includes two limb girdles (the shoulders and the pelvis) and their attached limb bones (arms and legs). This part of the skeletal system contains 126 bones, 64 in the shoulders and upper limbs and 62 in the pelvis and lower limbs. The limbs are probably some of the easiest bones to break as they are away from the bodies protection and seeing as we can land on the awkwardly and break them.
The movement of the body is carried out by the muscular and skeletal systems, the muscles are connected to bones by tendons, bones are connected to each other by ligaments, where bones meet each another is normally called a joint. Muscles which cause movement of a joint are joined to two different bones and contract to pull them together.
The Skeletal System is used in the game of Australian Rules Football all the time because we it is needed to run and stop quickly, we need to be able to stay on our feet when coming down from a marking contest or from punching the ball. The bones also keep everything in place and give us the ability to be able to take a hard hit to the stomach or a knee to the ribs and to be able to hold our arm firm to handball the ball.
Football is played with 18 players on the ground at one time with a maximum of five players sitting on the bench for each team. The objective of the game is for the players to pass the ball around by hand and foot to kick a goal, the ball can be marked when it has traveled fifteen meters or more by foot and is marked with out it touching the ground by a player, this player then has time to go back and have his kick. A goal is scored through the tall white sticks at either end and points are scored through the smaller red posts, each team only kicks one way and swaps ends with the other after every quarter. The quarters go for twenty minutes plus time on (time made allowance for by injuries, free kicks and goals).
[IMAGE]The skeleton plays an important part in movement by providing a series of movable levers that can move on their own, which the muscles can pull on to move different parts of the body, it also supports and protects the internal body organs. The skeleton is not just a movable frame, however; it is an efficient factory which produces red blood cells from the bone marrow of certain bones and white cells from the marrow of other bones to destroy harmful bacteria. The bones are also used as a storehouse for minerals like calcium, which can be supplied to other parts of the body. Babies are born with 270 soft bones which is 64 more than an adult has but many of these bones will mold together by the age of twenty or twenty-five into 206 hard, permanent bones.
The Red Spongy Marrow is the part of the bone that produces the red blood cells, the red blood cells are pumped around the heart and provide nutrients and oxygen to the rest of the body.

1. Long Bones (longer than they are wide): clavicle, humerus, radius, ulna, femur, tibia, fibula, metatarsals, metacarpals. The purpose of it is to provide support and serves as the consistent set of levers and linkages that allow us to move (formed from hyaline/articular cartilage)
2. Short Bones: carpals and tarsals. They consists of mainly spongy bone covered with a thin layer of compact bone.
The purpose is that it allows movement, provides elasticity, flexibility, & shock absorption.
3. Flat Bones: ribs, sternum and scapula.
The purpose is to protect and provides attachment sites for muscles.
4. Irregular Bones: skull, pelvis, and vertebrae.
Purposes: support weight, distributes loads, protects the spinal cord, contributes to movement and provides sites for muscular attachment.
5. Sesamoid Bones: a short bone embedded within a tendon or joint capsule, i.e. patella.