Task:
The effect of exercise on pulse rate
Prediction:
I predict that the more exercise I do, the higher my pulse rate will be. This is because our muscles need more oxygen to be pumped to them. Therefore the heart must beat faster to get more blood to the muscles. I also predict that my recovery rate will increase because my heart will be working to get muscles back to their original state.
Method/Plan
I am going to run at a jogging pace at different amounts of times. I am going to first run for 2 minutes then 4 minutes and then 6 minutes to see what affect it has on my pulse rate. I am going to measure my pulse rate for the first 2 minutes and note it down. I will then continue to measure my pulse rate in 2-minute periods and then see how long it takes for my pulse rate to recover. I will measure my pulse rate using my index finger and my middle finger at my wrist. I will put my results into a table and transfer them onto a graph. I will put a line of best fit on the graph to look for patterns in my results. I will also share my data with my friends to try and get an as accurate result as possible. I will attempt to make my experiment a fair test by keeping the following things the same: the speed I am running at and the gradient of the surface I am running on. A few things could stop my results from being 100% reliable these are that I am doing my experiment in lessons throughout a week period so the weather could change in this time. This could affect my results because muscles and our body seemingly work better when they are warm than they do in cold weather. Another reason is that it will be very hard to keep the same pace when running each time I do the experiment, I will also become tired and possibly slow down during the longer exercises. Many other things could affect whether it is a fair test or not e.g. laughing or the person running falling over because this would make the pulse rate rise dramatically because of excitement or shock. The main reason for unreliability on the recovery rate side of it is that in the 30 seconds I am reading my pulse rate I am recovering then also.
