Function
- To increase pulmonary compliance.
- To prevent atelectasis (collapse of the lung) at the end of expiration.
- To facilitate recruitment of collapsed airways.
Alveoli can be compared to gas in water, as the alveoli are wet and surround a central air space. The surface tension acts at the air-water interface and tends to make the bubble smaller (by decreasing the surface area of the interface). The gas pressure (P) needed to keep equilibrium between the collapsing force of surface tension (γ) and the expanding force of gas in an alveolus of radius r is expressed by the law of Laplace:
Read more about this topic: Pulmonary Surfactant
Famous quotes containing the word function:
“Morality and its victim, the mother—what a terrible picture! Is there indeed anything more terrible, more criminal, than our glorified sacred function of motherhood?”
—Emma Goldman (1869–1940)
“The more books we read, the clearer it becomes that the true function of a writer is to produce a masterpiece and that no other task is of any consequence.”
—Cyril Connolly (1903–1974)
“The intension of a proposition comprises whatever the proposition entails: and it includes nothing else.... The connotation or intension of a function comprises all that attribution of this predicate to anything entails as also predicable to that thing.”
—Clarence Lewis (1883–1964)