In order to make science more entertaining, it is a great idea to come up with some interesting & fun facts about the heart for kids as this will encourage them to want to learn more about how the human body works.


What does the human heart actually look like?



The heart is one of the most important organs in the human body. If it does not function properly, we quickly become very poorly. Kids often think the heart is on the left hand side of the chest, but in fact the heart is in the middle of the chest and is well protected by the rib cage. The heart sits between the lungs and because of its size, the left lung is slightly smaller than the right lung so that there is enough space in the chest cavity.
A kid’s heart is the size of an adult fist and because it is a muscle full of blood, the heart looks like a piece of meat you might see in the butchers shop. In a healthy person, the heart looks lovely and red, but in an overweight person, the heart will be covered in nasty yellow fat.
On average, the human heart beats around one hundred thousand times per day, which is a lot more than most muscles manage to do in the average day! In fact, the heart muscle is so strong it is capable of lifting a small car. In the average lifetime, the human heart beats approximately two and half billion times, which means it is very important to look after your heart!
What other interesting & fun facts about the heart for kids are there?
During exercise, it takes ten seconds for blood to travel from your heart to your big toe, and back again. There are around sixty thousand miles worth of blood vessels inside a kid’s body and if they were all stretched out like spaghetti, they would be long enough to circle around the world two and a half times.
There are four chambers in the heart: left and right atrium, and the left and right ventricle. There are also four valves that make sure blood flow is one way: it flows into the heart through veins on one side and flows back out of the other via arteries.
More fun & interesting facts about the heart for kids!
Every time the heart contracts, it pushes the blood back into the blood vessels. When the heart relaxes again, the chambers inside expand and blood rushes back into the heart. The heart beats with enough power to shoot blood more than thirty feet away.
Electricity makes the heart muscle contract and expand. When people on the television are hooked up to ECG machines, you can see spiky graphs on the screen. The spikes are measuring the electricity passing through the heart muscle and if the line goes flat, it means the heart has stopped beating and the patient is dying.
Amazingly, the human heart begins to beat four weeks after conception and by the time the embryo is eight weeks old, the heart is fully developed, albeit very tiny.