The Project

Our assignment was to first choose a way that the body does homeostasis. From there, we would research and fill out information on our function. We would conduct tests, and conclude our data by making graphs and writing up a lab report.

Our Project

Overview

My group chose to do blood sugar levels as our homeostasis function. Once we had our research done, we could start planning and conducting our experiment. Ours was a little different because we couldn't physically test our results in person, as it would mean drawing blood with a test kit, and nobody in our group had a kit or could go buy one. So instead, we had to look up levels on our own and draw conclusions and analyze with what we could find.

Concepts

Homeostasis - Homeostasis is the state of steady internal, physical, and chemical conditions maintained by living systems.

Scientific Method - The scientific method is the process that a scientist will go through while creating and conducting an experiment to have complete and accurate test results and analyzes. The scientific method is composed of 8 different steps. These are:

1. Question/Problem - The very first step in the scientific method is to come up with a question or problem that you think you can solve by conducting an experiment.

2. Observation/Research - Conducting research and observing beforehand to introduce yourself to the concepts and become familiar with them.

3. Hypothesis - The hypothesis is your prediction of what you think will happen during and after you conduct the experiment.

4. Experiment - This is the step in which you will put together a procedure that you will follow with very specific steps, and then following those steps, you will conduct your experiment.

5. Collect Data - The data collection is the data that you collect while your experiment is happening or after it has happened. You have to be sure to be accurate, otherwise the whole experiment may turn out with incorrect findings.

6. Data Analysis - This comes after you conduct your experiment and collect data. With the data you just collected, you will think about what happened, and analyze what you saw and what occurred.

7. Conclusion - The conclusion is where you take everything you have learned and found, and write it all down in a way for others to read or watch or listen to.

8. Report Findings - This is the final step, and this is where you share with others what you found during your experiment and how you found it.

Independent Variable - The independent variable is the thing that you will change in your experiment.

Dependent Variable - The dependent variable is the thing that will change because of your independent variable.

Control Group - The control group is the group in the experiment that has no changes applied to it.

Experimental Group - The experimental group has the changes applied to see what you can find.

Our Data

For our experiment, we tested for what would happen if one person drank water and the other a sugary drink like Gatorade, what would happen to their blood sugar levels, and how would homeostasis affect this. Blood sugar homeostasis works that if your blood sugar levels get too high, then the pancreas will produce insulin to lowers those level back to normal. Drinking fluids like water also helps to flush out the excess sugar. If your blood sugar levels become too low, then the body will produce glucagon to raise them in a similar way.

Hypothesis - For our hypothesis, we said that if one person drinks Gatorade and the other person drinks water, then blood sugar levels will spike for the person who drinks Gatorade, and then over time insulin will bring them back down.

Procedure - Since we could not test our levels with a test kit, our procedure was just looking up what our blood sugar levels would be if we drank certain things. However, here it what our procedure would be if we had a kit:

1. Person 1 (Water) and Person 2 (Gatorade) both take a blood test.

2. Person 1 drinks water and Person 2 drinks Gatorade.

3. They both take another blood test.

4. They wait 2 hours without eating or drinking anything.

5. After the 2 hours is over, they both take a blood test again, and compare levels.

Independent Variable - Type of drink

Dependent Variable - Blood sugar level

Control - Water

Data - Our data (from the internet) found that the normal blood sugar level before drinking was 130. After drinking, the person who drank water stayed at 130, but the person who drank Gatorade spiked up to 310. After 2 hours, both had a normal blood level of 130 again. The graph of our results is shown below.

Conclusion

In conclusion, our data represented pretty accurately the ways that sugar levels would rise and fall. While the numbers are all very exact because we didn't have a test kit the general idea is still there, and it supports our hypothesis, proving it correct. After finishing our tests and data collection and analysis, we wrote up a lab report to talk about what we did as our project, how we did it, and what we learned. Overall, the project went well as we were able to support our hypothesis with pretty sufficient data, and we were able to explain why our data shows this.

Reflection

For this project, I think we did a pretty good job, despite having to do this project 100% online at home. For our project, something that I think went well were our conscientious learner skills. We worked together efficiently, meeting our goals, and getting everything done on time. Two things that I think we could have worked on were our communication and collaboration skills. Since we did this on Zoom, it was hard enough to communicate, but we also didn't do as well as we could of, and we could have talked to each other more to work better and especially during our lab report when we weren't quite sure what each other was writing, even though it worked out well in the end. I think our collaboration skills also could have been better, and we could have worked better as a group, discussing things more, and working together as a group instead of semi-individually, and then putting it together. Overall though, I think our final project turned out pretty well, and I am glad that I was able to learn something new.