The pressures and times are illustrative values for an adult at rest, not a recording: about 16 kPa in the left ventricle and 3.3 kPa in the right, and one beat every 0.8 s.
In the model you start each contraction by tapping the chambers. In the body nobody decides: the heart muscle contracts by itself, and a small area in the wall of the right atrium sets the rhythm.
Time is slowed down during a beat and sped up for the cell’s trip: at rest a trip round the body takes about a minute.
The drawing shows one vena cava; a real heart has two. A semilunar valve has three pockets; the cut shows two of them. The walls are drawn thicker than they are, so the magnifier shows them to scale.
With reduced motion each contraction and each move of the cell is shown at its start and its end.
Select a part of the heart or a vessel to read about it in the card.
dark red: deoxygenated
bright red: oxygenated
Stage of the beat
1Filling
2The atria contract
3The ventricles contract
4The ventricles relax
The graph will show the pressure in the ventricles and the aorta as the heart beats.