By Elena Voropay

Bones, joints, cartilage, and ligaments form the body's structural support. Beyond providing points of attachment for the muscles and protecting internal organs in the body, your skeleton acts as an important reservoir for calcium and phosphorus, as well as the source of blood constituents. You bones serve the purpose of the rigit levers for any activity.

Exercise, along with an adequate diet, is essential for proper bone growth. But did you know that exercise affects primarily bone width, density, and strength but has little or no effect on length of the bones? As simple or as comlicated of an issue it is, you might find the following facts to be the fun part of learning your body's structure:

• Of the 206 bones in the average adult human body, 106 are found in the hands and feet (54 are in the hands; 52 are in the feet).
• There are 22 bones in the human skull. # The bones in the human body are comprised of 22 percent water.
  
• The most essential minerals to the human body are: salt for maintaining water levels, iron for red blood cells, and calcium for bones.
  
• When astronauts remain weightless in space for prolonged periods, scientists have discovered their bones lose a measureable amount of weight and thickness. This means that weightlessness actually cause human beings to shrink.
  
• While calcium is important to strengthen bone, 99 percent of the body's calcium is contained in teeth.
• The hyoid bone in the throat is the only bone in the human body not joined to another. # Babies are born with 300 bones, but by adulthood, we have only 206 in our bodies.
  
• Bones only account for 14 percent of the human body's weight.
  
• From birth to adolescence, selected bones in the human body fuse together. The last bone to fuse is the collarbone, and this occurs between the ages of 18 and 25.
  
• Human bones can withstand being squeezed twice as hard as granite.
• Bones can also stand being stretched four times as hard as concrete can.