The UNICEF Water Walk was an interesting event that helped raise money and awareness for

the valuable causes of UNICEF. The Water Walk ended up being a very physical experience that engaged
my whole body and serves as a valuable opportunity to analyze how physical activities can influence
many different body systems as well as gain a practical understanding of some of the ways my body
maintains homeostasis. In this event we were put into teams that took turns sprinting with jugs of water
to fill a bucket located away from us. This was to represent the difficulty many people around the world
have in access to clean water.
Perhaps the most obvious system that was engaged in the strenuous sprinting of the UNICEF

Water Walk was my muscular system. Calcium signals in my body initiated contraction of my muscles by

binding to troponin and the troponin-Calcium complex pulling tropomyosin from the myosin binding site

of actin. The power stroke is then done by the myosin binding strongly to actin, which causes the actin

filament to move. The isotonic contractions of my leg muscles was of great use to enable me to move

my body when my turn to run came.

Of course the communication between my nervous system and the rest of my body was a

necessary to coordinate the running (as well as integrate any other sensory input I had that day). As we

were running to fill up the bins with water, there were people spraying us with water from water guns.

When I was hit with water from the water gun, the signal went to my sensory receptors which further

stimulated my afferent neurons (which are part of the sensory division of my peripheral nervous

system). The graded potentials were clearly enough to reach the axon hillock above threshold because

an action potential was generated. As the action potential traveled through my axons (and speed up

by saltatory conduction), the depolarization of my axon terminals would cause the voltage-gated

calcium channels to open. The calcium that entered triggered exocytosis of the contents of my synaptic

vesicles and the neurotransmitters released would initiate a response in the postsynaptic cell when

bounds to the receptor there.

During the event, my cells were given the glucose they needed thanks to the release of glucagon
by the pancreas from my endocrine system. This stimulated my liver and muscle cells to release glucose
into my blood stream so I could use it for energy. When I ate sugary foods afterwards, the increased
blood glucose served as a signal for my pancreas to produce insulin.
The Garba event hosted by the Hindu student association was a valuable and insightful experience of
seeing a ritual from another religion. Not only did I observe this event but I also had an opportunity to
eat some traditional snacks.
While the use of my muscular system was not as obvious during the GARBA event as it perhaps

was for the UNICEF event, this system was still of crucial importance (though other body systems were

important as well). Of particular importance to me during this event was my cardiac muscles as well as

my smooth muscle. My cardiac muscles also utilized actin, myosin, troponin and tropomyosin as my

skeletal muscles do (expanded upon in the previous paper). My cardiac muscle fibers are electrically

linked to each other and the coordinated contractions were necessary for appropriate use by the

cardiovascular system and the rest of my body. My internal organs benefited greatly from the impact of

my smooth muscle. Without my smooth muscle I would not been able to regulate the movement of

materials in my body.

My nervous system was also of great importance during this event as it enabled me to take in

and integrate sensory stimuluses (and thus maintain conversations) during the Garba event. For

example, I was able to hear and respond to people throughout the event in part due to extraordinary

physiology of my ears. The sound waves that hit my tympanic membrane became vibrations which

vibrate the malleus, incus, and stapes bones in my ear. The stapes makes the oval window vibrate and

create fluid waves which travel through my cochlea and push on a flexible membrane there. This makes

hair cells there bend and opened ion channels which create an electrical signal which impacts the

release of neurotransmitters.

The food I ate was taken care of by my digestive system which initiated the production of saliva

before I even ate anything. I was especially happy for the negative feedback loops throughout my

digestion such as the release of somatostatin by H+ stimulating the D cell because this kept pepsin and

acid release in check. This all started during the cephalic phase as well, so it started before I even had

food in my stomach.