When I was back home in Seattle over the Thanksgiving holiday I went with my family to visit the Bodies exhibition which features actual human specimens allowing people access to sights and knowledge normally reserved for medical professionals. For me it was an interesting and eye opening experience as I never really realized how complex and amazing the human body is. Every specimen was unique as it featured a different part of the human body from the muscle and skeletal system, to the digestive and reproduction systems, to the more complex bodily functions such as the nervous system and more. Additionally throughout the exhibition were a number of fun facts about the human body, these included:

- A human being loses an average of 40 to 100 strands of hair a day.

- A cough releases an explosive charge of air that moves at speeds up to 60 mph.

- A fetus acquires fingerprints at the age of three months. 

- A sneeze can exceed the speed of 100 mph.

- Every person has a unique tongue print.

- An average human drinks about 16,000 gallons of water in a lifetime.

- It takes 17 muscles to smile, and 43 to frown.

- Babies are born with 300 bones, but by adulthood we only have 206 in our bodies.

- By age 60 most people have lost half their taste buds.

- Fingernails grow faster than toenails.

- Humans shed about 600,000 particles of skin every hour- about 1.5 pounds a year.

- A persons lungs are the only organ in the body that can float on water.

- All the blood vessels in the body joined end to end would stretch 62,000 miles or two and a half times around the earth.

Aside from these fun facts I also learned a lot about exercise and the human body. Your muscles grow when they recover and rebuild themselves after the heavy stress that you put on them in the gym. When you stress your muscles to the limit it develops micro-injuries, or tears in the muscle that when rebuilt and recovered allows for the growth of muscle size and strength.