The Heart

What is The Heart?

Within Biology, which covers cells, the human body, genetics, evolution, plants and ecosystems: the science of living things, this topic explains The Heart. Biology topics show how living things work, from the cell up to whole ecosystems, with models you can explore step by step.

Check that you can explain The Heart in your own words and give one example from everyday life. If you can do that, you have understood the core idea.

Understanding The Heart helps you explain how living things stay alive and respond to their surroundings, which is central to biology exams.

The Heart in detail

The heart is a muscular organ with four chambers: two atria that receive blood and two ventricles that pump it out. The right side pumps deoxygenated blood to the lungs through the pulmonary artery and the left side pumps oxygenated blood to the body through the aorta.

The left ventricle has a thicker wall because it pumps blood further, at higher pressure. Valves prevent backflow, and the coronary arteries supply the heart muscle itself. The heartbeat is controlled by the pacemaker, a group of cells in the right atrium. Pulse and heart rate change with exercise, and heart rate can be measured to assess fitness.

How the interactive helps you understand The Heart

Watch the heart model in the interactive. Use any sliders or buttons it offers to change the values and see how the heart model responds.

Before you change anything, predict the result. Then change one value at a time and check whether your prediction was right. This is a quick way to build a correct mental model of The Heart.

Real-life uses and examples

• Use The Heart to interpret a diagram, graph or microscope image from a practical.
• Structure a longer answer about The Heart by moving from definition to example to consequence.
• Explain how The Heart helps a living thing stay alive, using a plant or animal example.

Common mistakes to avoid

• Using everyday words, such as “energy” or “bad”, without their scientific meaning.
• Listing the steps of a process without saying how one step causes the next.
• Learning the definition without testing it. Use the quiz and the interactive to check that you can apply the idea.