Daniella Hill

Skeletal Muscle Lab Report

In this lab report there is data to address to muscle contraction of a rabbit muscle, there
are also pictures of the gross anatomy of isolated mink muscle. Minks were used to see the the
various types of muscles in the minks (see figure 2a, b and c) Once the student is done with that,
they will place the slide on the microscope and get a close clear look at 40X. (see figure 1A)
They will then apply the ATP to the muscle wait thirty seconds, then watch the muscle contract
at 100X. (see figure 1B) Due to the muscle contracting and moving the pictures are not
accurately the same fiber. The fiber contracted on average around 41% in length and 44% in
width. The percent is there to have a better understanding about whether or not the fiber
contracted. There was also a data table collected from the images, (see table 1). The table shows
the measurements of the muscles before and after ATP and salt solutions were applied. During
the measuring some of the fibers were hard to measure because of the curvature, if this
happened then the student could use a strand of hair, measure it, then after they would measure
that strand on a regular ruler.

(A) (B)
Figure 1. Rabbit muscle contraction. Figure A is the rabbit muscle before ATP was applied and
figure B is after ATP was applied. The fibers of the muscle were broken apart and placed on a
slide which was then viewed under a microscope. When ATP was applied to the muscle, it
contracted and moved like it should. The magnification for figure a was 40X, for figure b it was
100X. Photo Author

Table 1. Data for the rabbit muscle contractions. Below is a table that has data from the images
above. It shows both length and width before and after ATP and salt solution were applied. To
get this the student measured in millimeters. The percent is the best way to prove whether the
muscle shrunk (contracted) or not.
 Rabbit Muscle

Before ATP After ATP Initiated - %

contracted

180 72 108 40%

Length
176 68 108 39%

183 83 100 45%

45 18 27 40%

Width 30 10 20 34%

38 22 16 58%
Figure 2 A, B. Figure A is the anterior view of the head, neck, trunk and shoulders of the mink.
Figure B is the lateral view of the the arm of the mink. Photo by author.

Figure 2 C, D. Figure C is the medial view of the minks leg and hip and figure D is the lateral
view of the minks leg and hip. Photo by author.