ScienceThe ProfessorBeginner
Mapping Your Own Body, a free science course on Tomo

Mapping Your Own Body

Learn basic human anatomy by reading the physical landmarks, levers, and cavities of your own living frame. Discover how bones act as structural bridges, why muscles work strictly in pulling pairs, and where your vital organs actually sit.

Like Duolingo, but for Mapping Your Own Body. Tomo turns the whole topic into a game you play five minutes a day, until it actually sticks.

A short one: 12 levels across 2 sections, about 24 minutes end to end, roughly 5 days at five minutes a day. It moves through The Movable Frame and The Engine Within. It starts from scratch.

12 bite-size levelsAbout 5 minutes each

Free forever · No credit card · iPhone & Android

Barnaby the Bone, the guide who teaches the Mapping Your Own Body course
Mapping Your Own Body
with Barnaby the Bone
12
Levels
2
Sections
5
Min/day
What you'll learn

Key ideas in Mapping Your Own Body

  • Certain bones sit right under the skin with almost no muscle covering them, making them reliable surface landmarks
  • The collarbone, the elbow point, and the upper rim of the hip can be felt directly from the outside
  • Bones deeply cushioned by thick muscle, like the femur in the thigh, cannot be palpated directly along their shaft
  • The human spine naturally alternates inward and outward curves from neck to lower back
  • An S-shaped spine behaves like a flexible spring, compressing and rebounding to cushion vertical jolts
  • A straight, rigid pillar would transmit every impact directly into the skull and joints
  • The rib cage is not a rigid, solid box of fused bone
  • Most ribs connect to the central breastbone via flexible strips of cartilage
  • This cartilage hinge allows the ribs to swing upward and outward to let the lungs fill with air
  • The pelvis acts as a structural basin that bridges the upper and lower body
  • The base of the spine rests in the center of the pelvic ring
  • The pelvis divides the downward load and channels it outward into the left and right hip sockets
  • Bony projections give tendons a raised anchor point away from the pivot center of a joint
  • The cartilage hinge allows the ribs to swing upward and outward to let the lungs fill with air
  • Increasing the distance from the pivot gives muscles greater mechanical leverage
  • Without these bumps, tendons would pull almost parallel to the bone, making movement sluggish and weak
Why not just Google it

You've tried the other tabs

Wikipedia

Thirty open tabs. Four facts you actually kept.

YouTube

You watched. You nodded. By Sunday it was gone.

ChatGPT

One answer, then back to scrolling.

Online courses

Eight weeks. You meant to finish. You didn't.

Tomo gives Mapping Your Own Body the Duolingo treatment: levels, streaks, and quick quizzes that test what you just learned. That game loop is what the tabs above never had, so it's the one you actually finish.

Try a question

Here's what playing it feels like

A real question from this course. Take your best guess.

Mapping Bones and Natural Curves

Which of these spots can you easily touch right under the surface from the outside?

Get it right to open this lesson and 11 more in the app.

Course map

Where Mapping Your Own Body takes you

  1. 1

    The Movable Frame

    • Finding Your Skeletal Landmarks
    • How Joints Permit and Restrict Motion
  2. 2

    The Engine Within

    • How Muscles and Tendons Generate Force
    • Mapping the Internal Cavities

2 sections · 4 units · 12 levels. Built to play, not to enroll.

New

Tomo is in ChatGPT

Tomo is also a ChatGPT plugin: the same playable courses, built and played inside your chat.

Add Tomo to ChatGPT
How it's taught

You pick the voice

This course
The Professor

Mapping Your Own Body is taught in the Professor style: clear, structured, thorough. Want a different feel? In the app you can spin up the same topic in any of Tomo's teaching styles. Same facts, totally different vibe.

Start free

Start Mapping Your Own Body today.

Download Tomo, search Mapping Your Own Body, and play your first lesson in under a minute.