Design Lab - experiment to discover whether or not listening to house music affects ones heart rate.

International Baccalaureate Biology

Alexandra Piedrahita

IB Biology I

April 30th 2009

Heart Rate Lab

Period 5

ASM

c=fully p=partially n=not at all

Purpose: To discover whether or not listening to house music affects one’s heart rate. Heart rate is a measure of your pulse and your pulse is caused by the contractions of the left ventrical of the heart, and the series of pressure waves it causes on the walls of artery’s. Your pulse is how many beats your heart makes per minute and is measured in bpm’s (beats per minute). Heart rate varies significantly per person, according to their weight, age, fitness, and even genetics. A person’s heart rate is also affected by many factors in their environment (such as temperature) and the activity which that person is doing. Stronger people and athletes generally have low resting heart rates because they have more endurance. The factor that has the greatest effect on heart rate, however, is the amount of CO2 in the blood, the higher the density the faster your heart rate will go.

This is a preview of the whole essay

Hypothesis: I do think that listening to house music will make a person’s heart rate go up, maybe not as much as actual physical exercise does, but certainly adding a couple (5-10) more beats per minute. The reason as to why I think that this is going to happen is that house music is a type of music that has a strong beat and generally gets people motivated and moving. We associate house music with dancing and jumping up and down, and for that reason I think that making people listen to it will remind them of this and get their heart pumping faster because they are getting excited about the music. The scientific reason as to why this would happen would be that our bodies associate this type of music with physical exercise, since this music normally comes hand-in-hand with physical activity. Just like in Pavlov’s experiment with the dog’s who began drooling, our body would probably start increasing the heart rate to adjust to what it think’s would be coming.

Variables:

Variables Control of Variables

Materials:

Ipod with the song “Dota” by Basshunter
Headphones
stopwatch
Thermometer
Subjects A, B and C

Procedures:

Measure the temperature of the location in which the experiment is taking place using the thermometer
Have Subject A sit down for 3 minutes without doing anything, reading anything, or listening to music, and then measure their heart rate (how many beats per minute) using a stopwatch to measure one minute exactly.
Have Subject A listen to the entire song of “Dota” by Basshunter, and immediately after measure their heart rate (beats per minute) using the stopwatch to measure one minute exactly.
Record the heart rate in the data table
Measure the temperature of the same location again to ensure that the temperature is the same
Have Subject B sit down for 3 minutes without doing anything, reading anything, or listening to music, and then measure their heart rate (how many beats per minute) using a stopwatch to measure one minute exactly.
Have Subject B listen to the entire song of “Dota” by Basshunter, and immediately after measure their heart rate (beats per minute) using the stopwatch to measure one minute exactly.
Record the heart rate in the data table
Measure the temperature of the same location again to ensure that the room temperature has stayed the same
Have Subject C sit down for 3 minutes without doing anything, reading anything, or listening to music, and then measure their heart rate (how many beats per minute) using a stopwatch to measure one minute exactly.
Have subject C listen to the entire song of “Dota” by Basshunter, and immediately after measure their heart rate (beats per minute) using the stopwatch to measure one minute exactly.
Record the heart rate in the data table