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We typed the first part of your question right into the Yahoo! search box, and guess what bobbed up to the surface? A helpful article titled "What's an Adam's Apple?" from KidsHealth. The site explains that the big bump jutting out from the throats of most men is really a part of the larynx or voice box. When boys go through puberty, hormones cause the larynx to grow rapidly, deepening their voices and causing the bulge to form. Girls' voices also deepen with puberty, but since their larynxes don't tend to grow as much, they don't usually develop an "Eve's
apple." Next we poked around MedTerms.com, a handy medical reference dictionary. We learned the protrusion is actually composed of thyroid cartilage. Your larynx is surrounded by a skeleton of cartilage plates that prevents it from collapsing. The Adam's apple, properly called the prominentia laryngea, is the central ridge where two plates of cartilage meet. Technically speaking, the Adam's apple doesn't really "do" anything. In fact, some folks consider the bobbing bump an eyesore and undergo cosmetic surgery to make it less prominent. The procedure is called a trachea shave and is typically performed on men who either want to reduce an uncommonly large
Adam's apple or who want to make the bump completely invisible after a gender reassignment. As for how the funny little bump came to be named, that's a whole other question.
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