I have reached these conclusions as I believe that as the muscles use up the already existing oxygen in the blood the breathing and heart rate will increase to give the muscles the extra oxygen needed. As the body works harder a lot of energy will be used and as the body cannot longer continue aerobic respiration anaerobic respiration will take place producing lactic acid. Carbon-Dioxide levels will also rise with the increased breathing rate which will also increase the heart rate
I have made these predictions because I believe that the supply of Oxygen to the muscles will decrease which will push the heart rate up. I also think that a lot of energy will be used up as the exercise takes place, thus resulting in a further increase. If the body is unable to continue aerobic respiration anaerobic respiration will take place. This results in lactic acid being formed.
I am going to run a 200m circuit around my garden. The heart rate will be taken by feeling the pulse on the neck.
Here is the procedure of the experiment:
- I will warm up by doing some stretches
- The resting pulse will be taken and recorded
- I will begin by walking the 200m circuit and then using a stopwatch I will count the number of times my heart beats in a minute.
- I will do this three times so that I can take an average of my pulse rate so my recordings are more accurate.
The graph shows that the heart rate didn’t increase substantially for walking but then increased largely for running. The graphs steepness decreases after jogging, this is because the supply of Oxygen to the muscles decreases and energy is being used up as this is where anerobic respiration takes place.This resulted in lactic acid being formed.
When the exercise is complete the body’s heart rate does not automatically return to the normal “resting” pulse rate. This is because the body has to pay back all the energy and oxygen that has been used during exercise.
Although I believe that my experiment produced fair results, I am not sure that my experiment was for the most of accurate. For instance, I cannot prove that the exercise I completed was at ther same rate and that I ran 200m exactly.
If I were going to do this experiment again I would change the method of exercise I performed. I think that if I used professional running equpipment like a tread-mill I would produce more accurate results because I would be able to guarantee that the exercise remained constant throughout this experiment.
Finally, an actual ‘pulse-meter’ might have helped me produce more accurate readings of my heart rate as sometimes throughout the experiment I didn’t feel the pulse or I lost track.
Here is my table of results and my graph of results below:
