HAVE A HEART: The heart pumps 5.6 liters of blood through the entire body in roughly 20 seconds; each day your blood travels some 12,000 miles, and your heart beats about 100,000 times. This delivers oxygen and other essential nutrients to the body's cells and organs. A heart attack occurs when the blood supply to the heart muscle is cut off, either because part of the heart is damaged (such as the valves to the chambers), or because plaque has built up inside the arteries, narrowing them and severely restricting blood flow. Symptoms of a heart attack include a squeezing discomfort in the center of the chest, pain or tingling in the left arm, shortness of breath and sometimes a cold sweat, nausea, or dizziness.
ABOUT FLUID DYNAMICS: The study of the physics of fluids -- matter in liquid, plastic, gaseous, and plasma states -- is called fluid dynamics. Understanding the behavior of matter under different temperature and pressure conditions is important to applications such as the aerodynamics of aircraft and automobiles, the flow of petroleum through pipelines, weather prediction, and even traffic engineering. Other concepts important to solving problems in this discipline include the velocity and density of a fluid.
The American Association of Physicists in Medicine, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc.-USA, and the Division of Fluid Dynamics - American Physical Society contributed to the information contained in the TV portion of this report.
