We were sensible with the time constraints, if we had had half an hour’s worth of exercise, we would have found it difficult to let the athlete recover within our hour time slot.
Before carrying out our tests, we researched the idea of smoking and what affects the tobacco, tar, and other ingredients have on the human body. For example, is there a limit that people can smoke before the affects become noticeable? We found one piece of evidence that helped us a lot in drawing our final conclusion: smoking makes your heart beat faster so even before exercise a smoker’s heart should beat faster than a non-smoker’s. We also found out that in order to acquire energy an athlete must convert glucose and oxygen into carbon dioxide, water, and energy. The chemical equation for this is:
C6H12O6 + 6O2 6CO2 + 6H2O + ENERGY
Energy is used for building up larger molecules (e.g. proteins), contracting muscles, and maintaining a steady body temperature.
The above information came from the textbooks ‘Chemistry Matters’, ‘World of Science’, and the biology ‘CGP Revision Book’.
The following results are for the non-smokers:
These are for the two smokers:
The best way to get a good awareness of what these results represent is in graph form. [See Attachment Sheets on the back]
A one problem we had was the time constraint, this meant that we had to record the pulse rates for just 15 seconds and multiply it by four. Meaning that we could only possibly obtain results ±4bpm [beats per minute]; a problem. Another factor that could sway results is human error, quite a big factor, especially if we are to count to numbers as high as 240 in just 60 seconds. We double-checked each result for reliability and ignored any anomalies that came up; similar results were used to draw line graphs.
The graphs all showed roughly the same pattern, which can be described as the stages of recovery being at the very end and beginning of the graph, the steep inclines are between the ‘recovered’ stages and the middle ‘steady’ period, where the heart rate has peaked, or is at its’ limit.
These results are more or less what we had expected, but the rates are higher than we had predicted. Tester Z’s anomaly of 240bpm is enormously high, and we can never be sure whether it is true or if is a result of human error (a heartbeat at four times a second may be too high for anyone to count accurately). A better way of counting the heart rate is with a monitor; if I were to do the experiment again I would make sure I use one. Also, using just one person to represent each section of society (one male non-smoker; one female non-smoker; one male smoker; one female smoker) is not really enough, in most surveys (for health magazines etc.) hundreds or even thousands of people are used. A different type of exercise instead of the skipping, or even as well as it, would have given more accurate results, originally we had planned to test their sprinting abilities also, but this idea had to be scrubbed out from our plan due to time constraints. More variation of smokers would have been beneficial too, for example some people who had smoked for many years, possibly even people of a different age group. Obviously, though, this would represent an altogether different experiment.
