The Hidden Physics Behind Your Breath

You breath all the time, whether you think about it or not. But how does that even work? And what is breathing for? Patrick’s got all the answers to your oxygen-deprived questions in this episode. And yeah, there’s physics involved. » Subscribe to Seeker! » Watch more Human! » Visit our shop at So far, we’ve discussed blood a lot in this series, but take a deep breath in and exhale because in this episode we are exploring the respiratory system. Breathing is one of the few things we do continuously, every day, without thinking about it. Our bodies, like other vertebrates, depend on oxygen to run our normal aerobic metabolisms. And though some of our bodily processes happen without oxygen, we still need to burn some oxygen in order to really take advantage of the food we eat. Meaning at some point, we need to start pulling oxygen from the air and depositing it into our red blood cells.