Skeletal System

• Cartilage - strong flexible tissue that cushions your joints. Cartilage reduces friction.

• Tendons - Tough bands of tissue that connect the muscle to bone.

• Ligaments - Cordlike tissue that connects the bones to each joint. They hold bones in place.

• firm, smooth, white connective tissue

• found at the ends of bones and in between joints

• infants have a lot of cartilage, which is replaced by bone as they grow

Your body has plate-like bones that cannot move, such as those that make up the cranium. The cranium protects your brain.

A joint, also called an articulation, is any place where adjacent bones or bone and cartilage come together (articulate with each other) to form a connection. Joints are classified both structurally and functionally.

​Definition

• Immovable (fixed) - cranium

• Slightly movable (cartilaginous) - vertebrae

• Movable (synovial) - hip

• allows bones to swing in 1 direction, only

• similar to hinges on a door

• Examples: knee, elbow, finger joints, toe joints, part of ankle

Like doors, hinge joints can move in 1 direction, such as left to right OR up and down.

This is the hinge joint in the knee.

This is the hinge joint in the elbow.

• the most flexible joint

• allows for almost all movement

• ball-like end of a bone fits into a cup-like socket of another

• Examples: shoulder, hip

How a ball-and-socket joint can move

Because it is a ball-and-socket joint, your hip can move in many ways.

Your shoulder can also move up & down, move left & right, twist, and pivot!

• one bone twists around another

• allows side-to-side or turning movement

• Examples: top vertebrae meeting the cranium (neck)

The top of the spine meets the cranium in a pivot joint.