Background Info: Our project tested heart beat rate after doing physical exercise. Heart beat rate was measured after standing in place for a minute, walking in place for a minute, and running in place for a minute.
Why we chose this topic: We were curious to figure out how various daily activities affected our heart rate. In addition, after watching the video on heart attacks we were concerned about how each activity plays a role in our heart rate, and how we can take care of our hearts in the long-run.
QUESTION: Does physical exercise increase a person's heart beat rate? Does the physical intensity of the exercise have a positive correlation with heart beat rate.
HYPOTHESIS: We think that physical exercise increases heart beat rate. The more intense the activity, the higher the heart beat rate will go.
METHODS: We first measured a person's heart rate for 1 minute using Vernier's Hand-Grip Heart Rate Monitor. During this one minute, we would either stand, walk, or run in place. Make sure to rest for a few minutes before doing another run of the experiment. After Logger Pro finished collecting data on our laptops, we examined it.
HOW TO HOLD THE HEART GRIP MONITOR
VARIABLES: The intensity of the exercise was the independent variable and the dependent variable was the heart rate.
DATA AND GRAPHS
Leo's heart rate while running
Matthew's heart rate while walking
Zabin's heart rate while standing (Went from 84-94 beats per minute)
Eric's heart rate while standing
Vikram's heart rate while running
Vikram's heart rate while standing
Vikram's heart rate while walking in place
Zabin's heart rate while running
Zabin's heart rate while walking
Eric's heart rate while running
Eric's heart rate while walking in place
Although the values on the tables are not readable, the points on the graphs show that their is an increase in heart rate when exercising. In addition, the faster we moved, the steeper the slope of the graph was. Therefore, we can conclude that the physical intensity had a positive effect on heart rate.
PHYSIOLOGY ASPECT: Cells transport oxygen and energy using blood. The more intense an exercise becomes, the more oxygen and energy is necessary for your body. So, blood needs to be shipped out much faster. In order to ship blood faster, the heart must pump blood out faster. Therefore, heart rate goes up. Since running in place required the most energy, the heart rate went up the most.
FUTURE ADDITIONS:
When planning this experiment, we also thought about testing the CO2 emissions during exercise. However, we did not have time and ended up doing only heart rate. So, if we repeat this experiment again, we will add that variable.
Thanks to Leo Yu and Matthew Huang for also contributing data sets.
Thursday, May 26, 2011
Sunday, May 8, 2011
CSB: New Gene Disorder
Vocab:
Genomics is a discipline in genetics concerning the study of the genomes of organisms
Calcium is the chemical element with the symbol Ca and atomic number 20
Summary:
The Undiagnosed Diseases Program has discovered a new disease. The program relies on teams of specialists who use the most advanced tools of medicine and genomics to try to figure out the causes of diseases that have baffled doctors. This disease is caused by a genetic mutation. What it does is not allow your body to get rid of calcium, which then clogs up arteries, similar to cholesterol. One of the first reported cases was Louise Benge's. Her symptoms were difficulty with walking and hands always hurting. Her doctors were baffled by this because no one had ever seen anything like this. After some X-rays they could see the arteries were clogged, but they did not know why. Then the Undiagnosed Diseases Program got the case. Eventually they figured out that it was a genetic mutation. All of her siblings had the same problem so they looked in the gene pool. Neither of the parents had it, so it was recessive. They then found it on a gene that was not working. This gene produces extracellular adenosine, which contains the amount of calcium in the body. So because they did not have this, the calcium took over. Currently they are attempting to make a cure for this problem. Some suggestions are using a drug that lowers the calcium producing enzyme, alkaline phosphatase. It is good to see that our systems are doing their jobs, finding diseases. If we did not have these in place some pretty terrible things could take place. Hopefully in the future Ms. Benge can live out her life without the calcium deposits. I hope the cure comes out soon and we can have a solution to yet another disease.
Sources:
Kolata, Gina. "Medical Detectives Find Their First New Disease." The New York
Times. N.p., n.d. Web. 6 May 2011.
http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.daviddarling.info/images/calcium.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.daviddarling.info/encyclopedia/C/calcium.html&usg=__CjV-cjULIS5wcN6DxURmkwGIS0Y=&h=282&w=420&sz=31&hl=en&start=0&sig2=0VjK0LcqBpQcfZaV5dz27w&zoom=1&tbnid=B93wNa8xNSxs9M:&tbnh=130&tbnw=200&ei=ZI3RTfrFIIuCsQOgjfnvBw&prev=/search%3Fq%3DCalcium%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26safe%3Dactive%26sa%3DN%26biw%3D1280%26bih%3D697%26tbm%3Disch&um=1&itbs=1&iact=hc&vpx=282&vpy=87&dur=4977&hovh=184&hovw=274&tx=158&ty=113&page=1&ndsp=25&ved=1t:429,r:1,s:0
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