[HAPS-L] Comp finals, tori, and raisins

[Ken Saladin <ksaladin@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Thank you for posting that, Jon. It's interesting and
instructive to see what others are using as a final exam.  
like these questions for a review of anatomy. I'd like to see some finals
that include physiology as well. I'll try to remember to post mine later,
but it's not here on the home computer. 

I design my final to be quick to grade, though -- not quite ScanTron, but
my questions are multiple choice, true/false, and then they pick up to 15
of the false items and write a one-sentence explanation of why they're
false, or rewrite the statement in a way that makes it true. It has to be
more than a simple negation of the original statement. For example, if I
were to write a false statement that "Aldosterone supports body
fluid volume by stimulating the active transport of water out of the
renal tubule," I would not give credit for "Aldosterone does
not support body fluid volume by stimulating the active transport of
water out of the renal tubule." 

I have a couple of picky points on two of your questions. 

One, at question 6, is that I don't think the ileum absorbs any
significant amount of dietary carbohydrate. There's actually very little
nutrient absorption in the ileum; it's all taken up long before the
residue gets that far. You might want to change that to duodenum or at
least jejunum. 

The other, at question 8, is that a bit of peanut husk never really is
inside the body. Nothing that isn't digestible and/or absorbable is ever
truly in the body. I start out my description of the alimentary canal
with the concept of the torus. I tell the students to imagine a doughnut
on a platter with a raisin sitting on the platter in the middle of the
doughnut hole. The raisin is not IN the doughnut, just surrounded by it.
Another raisin embedded in the doughnut is truly IN it. The body, of
course, is just a stretched and convoluted torus, and while something in
the alimentary canal is surrounded by the body, it is not part of it, not
truly IN it. I proceed from there to shake up their intuitive (and wrong)
concepts of what a nutrient is. Thus, water is a nutrient but dietary
fiber is not, because the latter is never absorbed, never becomes part of
the body's tissues. But back to the question, if "body" were
changed to "GI tract" or "alimentary canal," nobody
could quibble with it. Or as Sherlock might have said, "It's
alimentary, my dear Jackson."

Now, it's off to Duke to witness my daughter receiving her master's
degree. She's actually got a REAL JOB lined up (coastal environmental
education for the University System of South Carolina).  I've
finally raised one to self-sufficiency and weaned her off my
checkbook.  I'll have some mojitos and start a few little fragments
of mint leaves wending their way down that alimentary journey.

Ken