Report: Heart Rate And Physical Exercise

1. Objective

The objective of this lab experiment is to make you design your own experiment to study a specific factor that may influence the heart rate.

2. Hypothesis

My heart rate will increase greatly when doing exercise in comparison the heart rate when not doing any exercise because of the necessary blood flow to the muscles by that, consuming more oxygen. I think the heart rate will increase 1/3 of the normal heart rate when doing exercise.

3. Scientific Context

What is heart rate: Heart Rate is the number of heartbeats passed in one minute (BPM). A heartbeat is the complete cycle of filling and emptying the heart, the beats correspond to the systole (pumping of the heart towards the rest of the body).

The heart, when exercising, it will increase the movement by contracting and extracting more, BPM will be faster, the most effort you are giving, the more it contracts circulating through your body to get the blood through all the muscles. When your body needs more oxygenated blood, your heart will give it.

The normal BPM on children of 10 years old or older: 60 to 100 beats per minute at rest but it varies from one to another. It’s very different for each one.

The maximum cardiac frequency that you can achieve can be achieved very easily, the only thing you need to do is do 220 minus the age of the subject. In my case, that would be:

FCmax = 220 – 14 = 206 maximum beats per minute or maximum cardiac frequency.

There are different ways to measure the heartrate of a person. In this experiment we can measure it with two methods:

– A smartwatch that can measure BPM in just a click

– Peripheral pulse: this involves putting your hand in the artery with the index and middle finger of the dominant hand (preferable), on the skin. We will avoid using the thumb for palpation, since it has its own beat and we could get confused. For the measure, we will have to exert a gentle pressure on the artery. The artery should be the main artery in your neck which beats every time the heart beats, when putting the fingers, you can notice this.

4. Variables

Independent variable: Physical exercise, running and playing basketball.

This is the independent variable because the beats per minute depends on the independent variable; physical exercise. By that we can say that this is the independent variable.

Dependent variable: BPM (beats per minute)

This is the dependent variable because it depends on the independent variable, the physical exercise, by this we can say this is the dependent variable

Controlled variables: Stopwatch, temperature, weight, time, the pen, etc.

These are the controlled variables because the stopwatch, temperature, someone weight, time and pen are controlled by ourselves when doing the test, for example, the stopwatch does not change time, it is always a minute and we control it, temperature the same, it is the same always as we do the test, the weight of the person doing it also does not change and we have that controlled as well as the pen which can’t change the experiment itself. These and more are an example of controlled variables on this experiment.

5. Materials

The materials we are going to need in this experiment are:

• The paper to write the times
• A stopwatch or, in this case, an Apple Watch
• Something which you can use to write or, in this case, a pen
• A basket ball
• Running equipment (shoes or equipment to do the sport you want to do)
• Calculator or, in this case, the Apple Watch

6. Method

• Before starting we need to equip the running equipment if needed or other sport that we are going to use. Then we start the experiment.
• First, my classmate and I will start measuring BPM at resting, measuring it with the Apple Watch.
• Then, we start the stopwatch at the same time one of us will start running
• After a minute the other one who isn’t running will stop the stopwatch and tell to the one who is running to measure the BPM with the smartwatch
• Right after reading it in the smartwatch, we write it down in the paper.
• After doing the test multiple times, we will start the next exercise.
• We will measure the BPM at resting just before playing basketball, when one of the both starts to play basketball, the other one will start the stopwatch.
• After playing basketball for a minute, the one with the stopwatch will call the other one who’s playing and we do the same as before, this basketball test is to run to one basketball to another and throwing the ball to the net.
• After doing the same as before and measuring the BPM right after doing the exercise, we put it down on the paper.
• We repeat the test multiple times.
• After writing down all the steps, all we have left to do is doing the lab report.

7. Collected Data

• Stage BPM at the time marked
• 1st rest 83
• Run 131
• 2nd rest 95
• Basketball 136

8. Data analysis

When seeing the results, we can see that we started with an 83 BPM heart rate at the 1st rest and then up to 131 due to the physical exercise in the run phase, then, we do a 2nd rest and we can see that the heart rate decreased but not like in the first rest, it’s a 12 BPM more than the first one. Then we can see the next physical exercise that is basketball. In basketball we needed to sprint from net to net so the heart rate elevated more that the run because we needed to move our legs and shoot the ball also. You can clearly see the change in the different stages and how it changed very easily.

9. Conclusions

In conclusion, the factor that changes the heart rate is very obvious when seeing the graph and the table, the experiment was very fun and interesting to make and we could see after the experiment how the heart changes between the different sections and after investigating about heart rate, normal heart rate, how everyone is different, maximum heart rate, the heart itself and more things, and can clearly say that I learned from this experiment a lot in my opinion and it was very easy to do and very easy instructions to follow, it can be modified to get the same solutions a lot of ways. I learned from this experience and I think it was very entertaining to do.

And in the hypothesis, I thought the heart rate was going to increase by a lot 1/3 and it did but not that much, and it depends a lot of the person and the physical exercise, with this report I learned that.

10. Evaluation of the Method

The method that we did was good for the time and space we had, maybe we could’ve change something like did more lapses or immediately test the heart rate but for the rest, I think the method was very good executed and is a very easy and functional way to show how the heart beat works. I would recommend this method.

11. Suggestions for improvements and further research

To improve this experiment, we could just run only an exact amount of meters because, in this experiment, the run was made by time and not distance and this could interfere when doing the experiment multiple times to check if the results where well. So, instead on only basing the experiment on time, also the distance because how fast are you running to better measure the BPM. Also, it interferes that not everyone had a smartwatch to see the BPM and some people had to do it by hand, that made the experiment a challenge to do, maybe we could’ve had a machine that could see the heart rate for this experiment. And for further research, we could research the different type of person and how and why does people have different heart rates. If it depends on the age, the descendants if it depends of being fit or on what by doing the same test but with different types of people.