Friday, February 19, 2010

13 intrinsic muscles, 9 cartilages, and 1 bone

It's the Larynx!!

Here's my model of the larynx that I had to make for my clinical voice pathology class. I only got a few points counted off on construction, mostly because my thyroid (big blue one) sits on my cricoid (larger white one) rather than being suspended above and around it, and my arytenoids (the big white pyramid-shaped ones to which the vocal folds attach) are HUGE. But since I'm not an engineer or a sculptor, I was pretty pleased with it!!

All of the cartilages are made from either air-clay or this Crayola stuff called Model Magic. The muscles are wiki-stix (waxed yarn) and/or red fruit roll-up. I am proud of my muscles, I think they look the most realistic and I don't think anyone else thought to use the materials I did!

So next time you've got a question about the Myoelastic-Aerodynamic Theory of Phonation or the Self-Oscillating Expansion on that theory, stop on by and I can point out the structures to you!


(the bottom two pictures are missing the epiglottis and the top one is the finished larynx but I did cover the base so it had a more polished look to it, I just forgot to take a picture of it and now they're on display at school)