Even though some may refer to it as "the lung", it consists of a right and a left lung. Two lobes form the left lung, while the right lung is formed by three lobes. The left lung has fewer lobes than the right because most of the heart is located in this area and takes up the space.
Each lung, lobe and segment is supplied with air through pipes, which branch off into smaller and smaller pipes. You can think of this system as a tree.
Did you know?
Until the smallest airways reach the air sacs, the wind pipe splits approximately 20-24 times. This makes an absolute number of approx. 3-4 million of air conducting tubes and tubules and all of this in your ribcage! 700 metres of air pipes are laying in your rib cage and twice as many metres of blood pipes (approx. 1400 metres). Exchange vessels around each air sac are not even included in this calculation.
As the airways branch off, the share of the smallest airways in numbers is very high. This significantly characterizes the nature of the lung as a tissue. For this reason, the smallest airways including the air sacs and the surrounding dense blood vessel network are called lung tissue or pulmonary parenchyma.
