Lung Capacity Fitness Level

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High Level Biology

Human Physiology 1  

Digestive or Respiratory System

Open Investigation

Will increasing levels of fitness enable one to have larger vital lung capacity?


DESIGN

Background Information

Notice how short distance professional swimmers, for example, a 50m freestyle swimmer, breathe only once or twice throughout the whole course. Why is it that it is nearly impossible for normal recreational swimmer to do that? If a person’s lung size cannot increase, how is it possible for professional swimmers to have such large lung capacity thereby able to hold large amount of air? The answer has to do with fitness level and exercise.

Breathing comprises of two actions, inspiration and expiration. Breathing is one of the required bodily functions of human beings. Our lungs deliver oxygen breathed in (inspire) from our surrounding air into the blood inside our body, and contrary exhale (expire) carbon dioxide out of the body. When inspiration occurs, the diaphragm and the intercostal muscles contract and causes the diaphragm to move downwards, increasing the volume of the chest cavity. The intercostals muscles also causes the rib cage to expand, further increasing the volume. Contrary to inspiration, expiration causes the diaphragm and intercostal muscles to relax therefore the thoracic cavity returns to its original volume, increasing the air pressure in the lungs and forcing carbon dioxide to be released from the body. [4] 

Diagram 1.0: The act of Inspiration and Expiration [6]

We know that our lungs respond to our body’s changing needs for oxygen. We breathe deeper and take faster breaths when our body is associated with vigorous exercise. Our lungs are the organs that perform all our critical breathing functions. As mentioned before, professional athletes attain a larger lung capacity than normal people. Lung vital capacity is the maximum volume of air that can be forcefully exhaled and inhaled in one breath. [6] 

Vital Capacity = IRV (inspiration) + ERV (expiration)

Diagram 1.1: Graph showing the different breathing activities  [7]

There are several factors which affect one’s potential lung capacity. Factors such as:

  • Gender – as males have larger lung capacity than females
  • Height of person – the taller the person is the tendency that they will have a larger lunch capacity then a shorter height person
  • Smoking – smoking damages the lungs and slowly diminishes its functions thus causing the lungs to become weaker
  • Exercise – athletes have a larger lung capacity then non-athletes
  • Breathing illnesses – eg; asthma can affect one’s breathing activity as the lungs are weak and have difficulty handling rapid changes in physical breathing activity (such as sprinting) [3]

In this experiment, the fitness level of the participant will be associated with their total vital capacity. It is hypothesised that participants with a high level of fitness will have a large vital lung and those with a low level of fitness will have a small vital lung capacity.  

Regular exercise leads to many physiological changes for the human body. One of the benefits and changes to the body is improving cardio-respiratory function.

Improved cardio-respiratory function means that the body is able to exercise much more capably – becomes easier for the body to handle rapid changes in breathing. As a result, it enables the body efficiently and effectively gets oxygen into the blood stream. Regular exercise allows the body to store, transport and utilize oxygen more proficiently.

Although the cardio-respiratory function is improved with exercising and increasing fitness level, it does not change the lung’s ability to expand. The main difference between a person with a high fitness level and a person with a low fitness level is the better ability to extract oxygen from the air in the lungs and also better able to extract oxygen from the blood. Therefore, it allows the person to breathe more easily and able to handle physical vigorous changes. Therefore a person with a high fitness level is able to store large volumes of oxygen in their lungs without any difficulty. [1]     

This experiment will be carried out in school grounds with male students of ages between 15 and 16 will be surveyed about their fitness level and tested for their total vital lung capacity. In addition, male participants must be between the weight of 55 and 65 kilograms and within the height range of 165 and 175 centimetres. All participants in this experiment will not have any breathing illnesses (asthma) and at the time of testing, participants will be at normal health (not sick, coughing etc) and normal physicality (not tired from running etc).

Participants will be asked to take a fitness level survey (refer to ‘Fitness Level survey’ in Appendix) and from the score on the survey (a score out of a possible 32), each participant will be categorised into one of five fitness level groups:

  • Extremely low         –         scores 8 to 18
  • Low                         –         scores 19 to 20
  • Medium                 –         scores 21 to 22
  • High                         –         scores 23 to 24
  • Extremely high         –         scores 25 to 32  

The five fitness level groups are the independent variables for this experiment and the respective vital lung capacity is the dependent variable. Each participant’s vital lung capacity will be tested three times.  

The average total vital lung capacity for males is 4.6dm3. [2] Participants’ vital lung capacity will be tested using Pasco GLX and a spirometer. A spirometer is an apparatus used to measure the volume of air inspired and expired by the human lungs. The spirometer is able to record the pressure of air, amount of air and rate of air that is inhaled and exhaled over a period of time. In this experiment the spirometer will be used to measure the amount of air that is breathed in and out at maximum volumes of the participants. The amount or air will be measured in decimetres cubed.

The amount of air breathed (inspired / inhaled) in is given as a negative value on the GLX meter and on the other hand the amount of air breathed out (expired / exhaled) by participants are shown as positive values. This is because when breathing in, participants are taking in all the air from and via the spirometer therefore simply put, the air in the spirometer is a negative value because participants have breathed in all the air. On the contrary, when participants breathe out, air is forced into the spirometer and it can be said that the air is ‘collected’ by the spirometer so therefore the value will be a positive number.

Vital lung capacity        =        | negative value |  +  positive value

 


Diagram 1.2: Pasco Spirometer and mouthpiece [5]

As human beings are needed for this experiment, there are some ethical issues that need to be discussed prior to testing. Therefore a briefing note is given to all participants before they are being tested. The briefing note outlines the aim of the experiment and the protocol for participants – participants are able to reject the experiment and are allowed to stop testing at any stage of experiment. No participants were forced into performing the experiment (Refer to ‘Briefing’ in Appendix).


Focus Question

Will increasing levels of fitness enable one to have larger vital lung capacity?

Hypothesis                (H1)

It is hypothesised that those with a high level of fitness will have a large vital lung capacity and therefore, those with a low level of fitness will have a small vital lung capacity.  

Null Hypothesis        (H0)

It is hypothesised that there will be no statistical differences between the lung capacity of a person with higher level of fitness and a person will lower level of fitness.

Variables

Independent variables 

The fitness level of participant – fitness level is determined by participants’ scores achieved on the fitness survey

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  • Extremely low
  • Low
  • Medium
  • High
  • Extremely high

Dependent variables

  • The vital lung capacity of participant given in decimetres cubed (dm3) and is measured using a Pasco Xplorer GLX and spirometer


Controlled variables

Table 1.0: List of all the variables that will be controlled in this experiment and explanations and method of how the variables will be controlled.

 


Materials

  • Participants who matches the requirements
  • 25 × Fitness level survey                        * Refer to Appendix 
  • Fully charged Pasco Xplorer GLX
  • Pasco Xplorer Spirometer
  • 25 × Sterilized Disposable ...

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