Muscles of your body are very important in that they are responsible for producing the mechanical force necessary to allow for movement. But how do muscle do this? You can think of it like teams of tug-o-war competitors pulling on a rope. By pulling on this rope there is a force that is generated that allows for the movement of the bones of the skeleton. The anatomy of the muscle, see figure 1, is built as a large series of ropes that are bundled together, forming what is called a fascicle, and these bundles are then bundled into the belly of the muscle. These fascicles have a variety of sizes and orientations to the length of the muscle that allow for muscles to make different levels of force. And in this exploration we will examine two concepts that determine how much force that they muscle is able to produce? First, we will explore the concept that we call pennation, or the idea that different muscles will have different angles of orientation to the direction that the muscle is attempting to make force. Second, we will examine the concept of the relationship between muscle size and force that indicates the larger the diameter of the muscle the more force it can produce.
To examine this concept we will look at muscles as a group of ropes that we will attempt to pull an object with. In which you and your group will attempt to see how the differences in angles of pull and diameter of rope will allow for greater, or lesser, amounts of force to be generated.