Heart Rate Investigation!

Safety:

• Wear trainers for safety. They will reduce the risk of you injuring your knees or ankles.

Variables:

• The variable that will change in this experiment will be the amount of time spent exercising.
• Other variables that will stay the same will be the intensity of the exercise, as we will keep it at a constant speed by doing one step up per second.
• The fitness of the person doing the exercise will also stay the same as we will use the same person and do the experiment on the same day.
• If someone has just had a cigarette or just eaten a large meal, this would affect the results. As we are doing the whole experiment on the same day this will not affect the results I get.

Fair Test:

• I will keep it a fair test by changing the variable I have chosen and keeping all the other variables the same.
• I will let the heart rate return to its resting rate before continuing with the next session of step-ups, as if the hear rate is higher to begin with it will rise higher and give an inaccurate result.

Results:

This table of results is from when Laura did the experiment.

This table of results is from when Rebecca did the experiment.

The results that I have made bold and underlined are anomalous results that I have noticed. They do not fit in with the other results, as they are too high or too low. I did not include them when I worked out the average.

Analysis:

I have looked at the results table and the graph and have found out that the results support my prediction. I predicted that as you exercise your heart rate will increase, but after a while the rate of increase would slow down and eventually level out. This is what happens as when you look at the graph you can see that the curve of best fit that I have drawn on to it starts increasing steeply and the begins to increase more gently. I cannot tell from my graph weather the line will eventually level out or not as I did not do a large enough range of results. But if it carries on with the curve it probabley will.

     I have put the averages of both Rebecca’s and Laura’s results on the same graph and I can see that both the lines curve in the same way, Laura’s curve of best fit is always slightly lower on the graph than Rebecca’s as they have different levels of fitness.

Evaluation:

I think that the accuracy of my results were quite good as I kept all the variables the same to make it a fair test. Even though I was careful gathering my results I still noticed a couple of anomalous results. I did not use these results when I worked out the average, as they would have altered the results to make it inaccurate. These were anomalous results as they were either too high or too low compared with the other too results recorded for that length of step-ups.

     The method I chose to use was quite suitable as the results were easily to obtain. If I were to repeat this experiment again I would make a few changes to improve the reliability of the results. I would use a running machine instead of doing step ups, as you can control the speed the person is running on a running machine but its harder to control the speed some one is doing step ups. I would also use a heart rate monitor watch, as this would accurately take the persons heart rate. When you take it by feeling the pulse you can loose count and then the result would be inaccurate.

     I could further this experiment by extending the length of the periods of exercise. For example you could exercise for 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9 and 10 minutes, this would give you a wider range of results and then you might be able to see if the heart rate eventually levels out. You could also change the variables that you keep the same and change. For example you could keep the length of the period of exercise the same but change the intensity of the exercise. Then you could see if the intensity of the exercise affects the rise of the heart rate.