Mitochondria are found in greater numbers in fast respiring cells because they are the sites of aerobic respiration. They absorb glucose and oxygen and provide energy, which is transferred in cells.
Anaerobic respiration is the release of a little bit of energy, very quick inside living cells, from the incomplete breakdown of glucose in the absence oxygen or oxygen dept.
Because anaerobic respiration involves the incomplete breakdown of glucose, much less energy is released, that in the aerobic respiration. However it can produce energy much faster over a short period of time until fatigue sets in.
When muscles are fatigued, they stop contracting efficiently and deep breathing is required to repay the oxygen dept by oxidising lactic acid to carbon dioxide and water.
For our coursework practical, we have to study respiration after exercise; therefore I plan to measure my pulse rate after doing different strengths of the same exercise. I plant to use heart beat as a measure, because when your muscles need more oxygen then your heart will beat faster as to get the blood round to your muscles faster. This will be shown as a faster pulse, which can be measured as a way of recording respiration.
Hypothesis.
I predict that the faster and harder exercise you do, the faster the pulse rate will be. I also predict that the faster the pulse rates then the longer the time for the pulse rate to return to normal (come down to rest rate).
I plan to do step ups as my exercise; there fore I can change the set amount of step-ups that I plan to do in one minute. The height of the step will be 15 CMS. I have chose to do step ups because I know that I will have to lift my leg 15cms each time and I will be able to be more accurate with my measurements. The numbers of steps I do per minute are:
1 step per 5 seconds
1 step per 4 seconds
1 step per 3 seconds
1 step per 2 seconds
1 step per second
Method.
Before I do the step-ups I have to take three resting pulse for one minute each time. This is to determine what my normal pulse rate will be. To take my pulse rate I will place 2 fingers on the underside of my wrist and the count the number of times that I can feel my vein pulsate. I will then take these results down. Then I will start my step-ups. To do my step-ups, I will use a 15cm step and then 1 step-up counts when I have:
- Lifted 1 foot onto the step.
- Then lifted the second foot onto the step.
- Then I will have to take the first foot of the step and onto the floor.
- Then to complete the step-up, take the second foot of the step onto the floor.
After I have done the step-ups for 1 minute I will then take my pulse using the technique described for 30 seconds until I have got back down to the ‘normal’ pulse. I will have to repeat this for each exercise then do it all again for accurate results.
Analysis.
You can see that the twelve step curve shows that my heart rate did not tend fluctuate as much as the others did. This is because I did not need to exert myself as much as the others do which show as that I have high fitness levels and on the day I had high levels of glucose and oxygen in my blood. There was even one point when I was taking my recovery rate, my pulse rate fell below my average rest rate, this happened because my muscles did no need a lot of energy.
As you can see the 60-step line reached. The highest point in the graph therefore that is when I had the highest heart rate. This is because my muscles needed more energy to carry out the exercise and had to have more blood passed round the body.
This curve fluctuated the most. I also feel that when was recovering form this exercise my heart rate came down quite quickly and seemed to be even.
The results did not come out as I planned, you can see that I have drawn, on the graphs, the line I did expect and then I drew the actual line. I believe that I did not get a directly proportional line on both graphs because of a number of factors: the time of day, what I had been eating that day, what I had been doing that day and maybe even what I had been doing during the exercise (talking, laughing).
This is because when you exercise your muscles work harder. To do this they need more energy comes from respiring, food and oxygen. The muscles need the energy from oxygen and food to get to the cells and this energy gets there using the blood. Therefore as you work harder you need more blood to be pumped to your muscles therefore your heart beats harder and faster and you have to breath faster and harder to get more oxygen to the blood which gives the energy.
The curves show that they were both pretty similar in the way I recovered. You can see a pattern in both the graphs, in the way that there is a dip in the pulse rate in the actual line. Another pattern that you could see in both the graphs was the fact that they were both nearly directly proportional and I believe that this shows that my results were not 100% accurate but they were sufficient enough to get sound graphs.
Evaluation
I found that these results were not as good as I had planned, simply because of the nature of the experiment. I was trying to find how the rate of respiration increased by using heart rate and pulse rate as my dependent variable. This is not accurate because you cannot measure the glucose in the blood and you also cannot measure the oxygen in the blood.
If I had to do these experiment again; I would have to use a digital heart rate monitor because the manual method is not very accurate as it could be. Also I couldn’t find my pulse sometimes and this was a problem.
A digital pulse monitor would have been able to give me a pulse rate straight away and this would have solved the problem of grouping all my results together thus making them inaccurate.