Sixth Grade
Worksheets
Flatulence: The Gas We Pass
Joseph Pujol (Le_Petomane) at a "concert."
"Cut the cheese," "pass gas," and "fart" are all clever ways we humans have come up with to talk about FLATULENCE. Flatulence is described in Wikipedia as "the expulsion through the rectum of a mixture of gases that are byproducts of the digestion process of mammals and other animals." Passing gas is a normal bodily function. Everyone has gas, also known as flatus (pronounced FLAY tuss). In fact, it is an important signal of normal bowel activity. The average person has a "flatus event" up to fourteen times each day.
Flatulence is what happens when the food we eat creates gas in our intestines. Sometimes it comes from swallowed air that never got burped out. Other times, some of the food we eat isn't broken down in the stomach. The undigested food proceeds through our intestines where bacteria pitch in to help. One byproduct of that breakdown is gas.
