As you can see there are many different factors, which can affect your pulse rate. We however are not going to investigate all these factors. We will just investigate the affects of exercise.
Aim
I am going to investigate the affect of exercise on your pulse rate.
Prediction
I predict that the more strenuous the exercise, the more your pulse will rise by. This is because; your muscles will be working a lot harder and will therefore require more oxygen and glucose, which the blood carries for them. This means that the heart will have to work harder to get this blood to the muscles that require it. This results in the pulse rate being faster.
Apparatus
We will need,
- A stop watch
- A skipping rope
- 2 people
- Trainers
- A cycling machine
- A stair master
As you can see not much equipment is needed, this will make the experiment a bit easier.
Method
In our investigation there are many different things that we need to take into consideration. We have to think about how we will make it a fair test, be safe, make the results as reliable as possible and have enough results to make a graph.
We are going to try and get our heart rate to rise by doing different activities, which are of different hardness’s. So this is the one thing we will change. The exercises we will do are:
- Star jumps
- Running on the spot
- Step-ups
- Cycling
- Skipping
To do star jumps, you jump while moving you arms up to 90º at the same time as separating your legs. You then jump, close your legs and bring your arms down to your side. You repeat this.
To run on the spot, you simply run on the spot!
To do step-ups, you can use the stair master. First you enter in your weight in kgs, then the time you wish to exercise for and the level. You then move your legs up and down as if you are stepping up stairs.
To do cycling, you can use the cycling machine, by setting it to the right level, then cycling.
To skip, you use a skipping rope, jump over it while holding each end in each hand, then bring the rope over your head, back on the floor and jump over it again.
So each time you do one of the exercises for one minute, taking your pulse rate, before and after exercising. We will repeat each exercise 3 times so we are able to take and average pulse rate and have more reliable results. We will make sure that we don’t eat before we exercise as this may affect our pulse rate, because our stomach muscle would be working to digest the food we had eaten and more blood would need to be pumped around to the stomach muscles faster.
Here is a table to show the aspects we will change and the aspects we will keep the same; these will help to keep it a fair test.
As you know, we will do 5 exercises. This will make sure that we will have enough data to draw a graph to show our results clearly. To make sure that we keep safe, we will wear trainers, so we don’t injure ourselves. An adult will properly supervise us so if something bad does happen someone sensible will be there to deal with the problem.
Results
Here is a table to show all three sets of my results:
As you can see, not all the results for cycling are entered. This is for the reason that, we did not do them. This is as a result of us not being able to use the resources we had planned to use, as there was not sufficient supervision.
Here is a table to show my average results:
Here is a graph to show my results:
Conclusion
The pattern that my graph showed was that the most strenuous exercise was cycling, this may have been due to the fact that I did not take an average, as I only did this exercise once. If this was the case then, skipping was the exercise, which got my heart rate going fastest, followed by running on the spot, step ups and finally star jumps. The graph also shows that my heart rate started at around 100 bpm and therefore increased a great deal for each exercise. My graph and my results show that my prediction was correct, it showed that the more strenuous the exercise, the more my pulse rate will rise by. This is true, because my muscles were working a lot harder and therefore required more oxygen, and glucose, which my blood carried. Got this extra oxygen, by breathing more heavily and I was also hungry after exercising. This is my body’s way of telling me it needs more glucose-energy. So my heart had to work harder to get this extra oxygen I was breathing in to my muscles that needed it. So as a result, my pulse rate was faster.
The graph also shows what effect different exercises have on my pulse rate. E.g. Exercises like star jumps don’t require much muscle movement, so my pulse rate didn’t rise by very much, however exercises like skipping do require a lot of muscle movement so my pulse rate did rise by a lot.
Evaluation
There are not really any anomalous results on my graph, this is because my graph shows different exercise, so does not have a line of best fit. There is one result, which is slightly out of the way, but it may meant to be there. This is the result for the cycling. There may be an explanation for this, we only managed to do the cycling set of results once, as we were using a mechanical bike, which kept the speed constant so our results would be more accurate. But on the week we wanted to use the bike, the equipment was not available for use, so we had to change our experiment slightly, there was no way that we could do anything similar to cycling in our class room, so we just didn’t do this. But for all the others we were able to cater for them e.g. skipping we skipped across the room, instead of skipping with a rope. All our other results however seem ok, they seem to fit in with the theory the more strenuous the exercise the more my pulse rate increased. This may have been true for the bike, but I can’t say, this result may not have been reliable. For all the others, this tells me that my experiment went well and there was nothing that went wrong apart for the use of equipment, but we managed to get around this problem ok.
If I was going to do this experiment again, I think that I would maybe think again before using electrical or mechanical equipment as it is very difficult to be able to use it, this is because the equipment is not very safe, so you have to have an adult supervising you at all times. If a teacher is absent for some reason, and the rest of the class require supervision at the same time as you, then you cannot use this equipment. I would maybe choose exercise, which would be able to be done within a class situation safely. This would ensure that I can get all my results, but they may not be accurate as the machines keep the speed constant, which make the results very accurate. To get around this problem, you could have more time so that you can use the equipment when teachers were able to supervise you. To get more information, you could also do more different exercises, e.g. sit-ups and press-ups etc.
There is also a different experiment you could do, you could do the same exercise, say running on the spot, and you could just change the time you run for each time and see if the longer you exercise the more your pulse rate increases or not.
Over all, I feel that my experiment went very well and I enjoyed doing the investigation. Even though everything didn’t go according to plan.
