How does amount of a certain exercise effect human pulse rate?

GCSE Physical Education (Sport & Coaching)

Pulse Rate Experiment

Research Question:

How does amount of a certain exercise effect human pulse rate?

Variables:

Controlled: Time/Amount and type of exercise
Dependent: Pulse rate
Independent: Time/Amount of exercise

Hypothesis:

I am pretty sure that the pulse rate will increase as the amount/time of the exercise increases. I think that if the person is fitter, the pulse rate will be slower. As we do the exercise more, the amount of glucose/oxygen in our body will probably change so this will result to the pulse rate to change as well.

Background Information:

During each heartbeat, the muscles of the heart contract which causes a wave of pressure which forces blood through the arteries. This wave of pressure is called a pulse. There is one pulsation for each heartbeat. The pulse can be felt at different parts of the body where the arteries are just under the skin. These places are the temples, neck, crook of the elbow, wrist, groin, back of the knee, and the inside back of the ankle. The normal pulse rate is different with age.

When we exercise or do any kind of physical activity, the heart rate increases to supply the muscles with more oxygen to produce extra energy. With extreme exercise, the heart can beat up to 200 times per minute. The brain sends nerve signals to the heart to control the pulse rate.

If we measure one’s pulse while they are lying down, standing up or sitting down, results may vary. They might vary because the amount of oxygen/glucose in one’s body would change, therefore the pulse rate changes. A trained athlete's heart can pump more blood with each beat so his or her heart rate is slower.

Example:

Engela

Ana

Pulse rate also changes if you tell a certain story to a person. For an example if you start off with nature surroundings and peace, your pulse rate will slow down, and then you start to tell the story in a scary way, the pulse rate will rise. This is what we did in class. We relaxed our heads and hands on the tables and the teacher was telling a story like this one. Our eyes were closed so we really got into the story. Then it got scary and he banged on the table! This is the pulse rate we got: Engela: 63

Ana: 62

During exercise, there are two ways that the heart can meet the body's need for oxygen. It can beat faster or it can beat harder, which makes it move more blood per pump. But it can only beat harder if it was strengthened through regular exercise.

Apparatus/Materials:

Stopwatch
Notebook
Pen/pencil

This was a very simple experiment. All we used was a stopwatch to measure the times and the pen/pencil to write the data in the notebook.

Method:

As I said before, this experiment was very short and simple. Therefore the method is not ...

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Ana: 62

During exercise, there are two ways that the heart can meet the body's need for oxygen. It can beat faster or it can beat harder, which makes it move more blood per pump. But it can only beat harder if it was strengthened through regular exercise.

Apparatus/Materials:

Stopwatch
Notebook
Pen/pencil

This was a very simple experiment. All we used was a stopwatch to measure the times and the pen/pencil to write the data in the notebook.

Method:

As I said before, this experiment was very short and simple. Therefore the method is not complicated at all. What we first did was figured out the times and the type of exercise. Then we decided that we will only do the experiment on ourselves.

The controlled variable was the time and the type of exercise because we are the ones who decided what it would be. But the dependent variable is the pulse rate because it depends on the amount and type of exercise. The independent variable is the time/amount of exercise.

Engela was the first one to start. I took the stopwatch and told her when to start running. She first ran for 10 seconds and when I told her to stop, I measured her pulse while she was standing up and on her hand for 1 minute. Then I recorded it in the data table. We continued doing the different times and measuring the pulse after each one until the table was complete.

Then it was my turn. This time Engela was timing me with the stopwatch as I was running in the same speed for each different time. She also measured my pulse while I was standing up in 1 minute.

Data Collection:

Type of exercise: Running in place/Jog

ENGELA

Pulse rate before the experiment: 87

ANA

Pulse rate before the experiment: 82

Data Analysis:

As you can see the results are as I hypothesized them to be. As more time the exercise was done, the pulse rate was going up.

If we look at Engela’s results we can see that everything is normal and logical in the data. Her pulse rose each time by about 5 beats.

But my results are a little different. In the first 10 and 30 seconds, my pulse rate rose rapidly. But then it stabilized and got a small pattern. The pulse started rising by about 5 every time and so on. I also have more beats/min than Engela in every amount of time/exercise.

As you probably noticed, there is a possible error in my data. The 1 minute and 50 seconds time has a pulse rate of 97. This seems rather strange since the previous pulse was 104 and the next one 115. I am 90% sure that there has been some kind of human error made in the experiment to make the result like this. I probably did not measure the pulse very well or got off track and lost count or something. But the rest seems quite good. I would say that this data is a reasonable good set.

If we look at the graphs we can see that Engela’s data is nice and stable, growing in a normal line, while mine is rather cracking at some places and changing. In the last time of our exercise, Engela’s pulse rate fell rapidly while mine rose rapidly.

These are the graphs of the data:

Conclusion and Evaluation:

6) Describe sources of error

7) Recommendations for improvement

We researched on how the amount of a certain exercise effects human pulse rate.

My hypothesis was that the pulse rate will increase as the amount/time of the exercise increases. If the person is fitter, the pulse rate will be slower. If we increase the amount of the exercise, the amount of glucose/oxygen in our body would change and the pulse rate will change as well.

The procedure was very simple. All we used was a stopwatch and pen and paper to write down the results. We measured each of our pulse rates after each certain time of exercise. Then we just recorded it in a table.

My hypothesis was very much correct! The pulse rates did rise as the person did more exercise and the fitness as well. I am not very sure, but according to the table, I am fitter than Engela since my pulse rate is a little bit smaller than hers. However in the last exercise of 2 minutes and 10 seconds, both our pulse rates have changed. Engela’s was way smaller than mine.

Since this is quite a small experiment that does not require too many materials (hardly any!) or any extreme procedures, we did not make many errors. One error possibly made was when one of us slowed down the pace. We should have kept the same pace for the required time and not slow it down because that would have ruined the experiment. Another bad error that we made is in the end of the experiment. We thought that it would be enough to do the time until 1 minute and 50 seconds so we stopped there. After we asked the teacher, he said that we should at least add one more, so we did. But after all that time of resting, the pulse rate has gone down and the table is looking weird in the end now. The final pulse rates are very different from what they would have been if we did not rest so long in between like we did not in the other ones.

So if we were to do this experiment again, I would definitely make sure that both I and my partner run in the same pace for every time given. This way the results would probably be more accurate and we would be more confident about our hypothesis. And another important thing I would do next time is decide on the right times that we will use so we do not have to stop and ruin the experiment, but continue it and make it go smoothly. Maybe I would even choose a different exercise. There is a lot of thing I could do, but these are most of the error corrections I would definitely have to make.

Questions for further research:

What effect on the pulse rate would be if we were to do heavy exercise first and then light exercise?

I think that this question would be very interesting to research on. I would really like to know what the pulse rate would be like if we were to do an exercise from 2 minutes and 10 seconds up to 10 seconds as the last time. I am not even sure what would actually happen so I would like to experiment and see.

What effect would different kinds of exercise have on the pulse rate?

I am pretty much sure that heavier exercise will obviously bring the pulse rate up, but maybe the fitter people would have some different results. I would like to research and see if the difference is big or not between different exercises.

What effect would different kinds of stories have on the pulse rate?

I think that it is very interesting how the pulse rate reacts on different kinds of atmospheres and/or stories. The pulse rate goes up when the person is scared and it goes down when the person is relaxed. I would like to test what different kinds of stories (scary, calm, funny, stupid, educational, etc.) can do to the pulse rate on a person.

Bibliography:

My notebook
Author unknown. Habits of the heart: Lessons.[online] Available at .Accessed on 2.3.2004.