Surface Tension & Surfactant in Alveoli

Ninja Nerds!

In this lecture Professor Zach Murphy will be teaching you about Surface Tension and Surfactant in Alveoli. We will be outlining the significance of the air-water interaction in the alveoli of the lungs. We talk about how this air-water interaction increases the tension within the alveolar walls, increasing the collapsing pressure of the alveoli. We also discuss Laplace's law and show a diagram of the histology of the alveoli. In addition, we talk about surfactant and its function to naturally act to decrease surface tension. In the presence of a pathology, when surface tension is high and surfactant production is low, this can lead to infant respiratory distress syndrome, which is described in this lecture.