Jogging in Place

Purpose: When a person smokes a cigarette he or she is inhaling tar into his or her lungs. The lungs have tiny sacs called “alveoli,” that allow the breathing process to work. Some of the tar that makes its way into the lungs becomes deposited in these tiny air sacs. When this happens two things occur. First, the sacs can become filled with tar and cease to function. Second, the air sacs can fill up with tar and burst. It both instances, the tar reduces the ability of your lungs to do their job and you experience shortness of breath. This activity will simulate what happens when an individual smokes and experiences shortness of breath or develops emphysema.

Trivia: The tar in cigarettes is the same tar that is used to make asphalt roads. If you were to smoke one pack of cigarettes per day for a year, you would be inhaling the equivalent of a quart jar of tar into your lungs.

Materials: One drinking straw for each of your students

Activity: Have the group participants stand up. Tell them to jog in place pretending that they are running up hill, down hill, and across a flat parking lot or around a track. Remind them to take good strong deep breaths as they do this. After a period of time, stop them and pass out a straw to each group participant. Repeat the same process, but this time remind them that they can only breathe through the straw. Do not allow this part of the activity to go on so long that group participants feel faint. Collect the straws at the end of the activity.

Processing:

1. How did you feel when you were jogging the first time?

2. How did you feel when you were jogging and breathing through the straw?

3. How many of you had trouble running hard and breathing through the straw?

4. Did any of you feel light headed when breathing through the straw?

5. How do you think this activity relates to smoking?

6. What can this activity tell us about smoking?

7. What activities can you think of that would be hard to do if you were a smoker?

8. What kinds of activities would you like to do in the future that would be more difficult if you were a smoker?

Resource: Activities that Teach, Tom Jackson