All right, so for this example we're going to go through this image and use these words to label our graph and I'm just going to go in order here. So first up we have this section where we can see we are going rapidly from a negative voltage to a positive voltage. So that is going to be our depolarization phase, right, which is b over here. So we'll label that as b. Following depolarization, after our neuron gets nice and positive, we are going to repolarize.
Right? We're going to get back down to where we were, and so over here repolarization is d, so we'll put that there. Remember, one way to remember those is that our neuron likes to be in the negatives. Think of it as like polar. It's like literally very cold.
Right? And if we are depolarizing, we are getting warmer up into the positive temperatures, and if we are repolarizing, we are like refreezing, right, getting back down to those negative temperatures. There's one way to remember that. Now, after that, we're going to have this little period, and that is our refractory period, right, which looks like it is a so we'll put an a there. That is the little period where our neuron can't fire, it's taken a little break, and then after that brief refractory period, our neuron is going to get back to about negative 70, which we know is resting potential so we will put a c there.
And there you have it, that is our sequence of an action potential. There you go.