Match the description to the parts of the human digestive system below. (A) Small intestine (B)

Match the description to the parts of the human digestive...

Key Concepts

Small Intestine Function

The small intestine is the primary site for digestion and absorption of nutrients. In the context of starch digestion, pancreatic amylase in the small intestine completes the breakdown of starch into simpler sugars, allowing the body to absorb them efficiently.

Human Digestive System

The human digestive system is a complex series of organs and glands that process food through mechanical and chemical means, breaking it down into absorbable nutrients. Each part of the digestive tract, from the mouth to the colon, plays a specialized role in this process.

Digestive Enzymes

Digestive enzymes are proteins that catalyze the breakdown of food components into simpler molecules. For carbohydrates like starch, enzymes such as amylase initiate the process in the mouth and continue their work in the small intestine.

Transcript

00:01 All right, so in section 3, question 5, we're given a set of answer choices, and we're asked to identify where it is that the digestion of starch is completed.

00:11 And so if you have your diagrams memorized, this is a pretty straightforward question.

00:15 You would know the answer right off the bat.

00:17 But let's assume that you don't know your diagrams and you need to deduce the answer.

00:21 There's a few steps we can go through to do that.

00:23 So we'll start by eliminating the obviously wrong choices.

00:27 So going through the list, we can't really eliminate the small intestine for any reason.

00:32 And so we'll put a start by that one for the moment.

00:37 And let's move down to the stomach.

00:38 Now, we know that the digestion of starch is catalyzed by an enzyme amylase, and there's a few others after that.

00:45 But the ph of the stomach is highly acidic.

00:48 So any digestive enzymes that tried to act in the stomach would instantly be denatured, and they would not be able to sort of perform their task.

00:56 So we can eliminate the stomach just like that.

00:59 Moving on to the esophagus, we know that the esophagus is just a transfer tube from the mouth into the stomach, and that no active chemical digestion really occurs there.

01:09 So we can eliminate that.

01:12 Moving down to the colon, also known as the large intestine, this is kind of the location of the final stages of digestion, like reabsorption of water and some symbiotic bacterial activity, but no start digestion.

01:25 So we can eliminate that there.

01:27 So this leaves us with the mouth and the small intestine.

01:32 Now, both of these sites have some starch digestion.

01:35 So let's go ahead and take a closer look at the mouth...

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