Lab Procedures

Focus Question: How do stimulants and depressants affect our heart rate short-term? How does it affect our health long term? 

1. Gather the Materials

The needed materials for this experiment are simple. First, we need coffee to work as our stimulant and sugar. Sugar will act as a stimulant, and will show us the effects on our heart rate. Sugar is known to have an effect on our heartrate, and is known to affect our bodies- but our question is to what extent? second, we need some sort of a depressant. We won't use any harmful substances that may put our participants at risk, but we use meditation to mimic the effects of our depressant. Most importantly, we need a controlled and relaxed environment. A place like the hallway, or a place away from chaotic scenes will do just fine.

Important ) Ensure that consent is given by parents before the intake of caffeine or any substances that may not be suitable for children (like coffee and caffeine). It is noted that Calvin Industries is not reliable for any damages done by the intake of caffeine. The means of our lab experiment is purely done for scientific and educational purposes only and is not meant to endanger anyone, and we are not involved in any acts of child endangerment. The lab has been consented by Ms. Ivy prior to the beginning of the experiment, meaning that we were given clearance to ingest caffeine and any other substances for the sake of science. 

2. Measure the heart rate

Second, let's measure the heart rate prior to ingestion. For the most accurate results, we will have 2 participants who will engage in the experiment. One will intake the stimulant, and one will intake the depressant. We will repeat this process in the future in the lab to see and measure the effects that the substance may have had. Before we begin, however, we must first answer this question: based on prior experience and knowledge, how well or not well do you react to stimulants and depressants? We understand that each person reacts to stimulants and depressants differently, and our bodies are each capable of different doses of caffeine. Therefore, its important to obtain a basic understanding of the tolerance of caffeine.

Post-lab Conclusion ) Calvin can intake little amounts of caffeine. More dosage than he can handle could result in DEATH (exaggeration). Danhee can intake large amounts of caffeine based on prior experience. Based on this data, we can tell that the effects of caffeine are different for different individuals. 

3. Ingestion and Measure

Now for the first phase of the experiment. Ensure that they are in a controlled environment. 

• Stimulants ) Ingest the substance (coffee). Start at 5 mL at once, and drink 5 mL every 5 minutes. Every 5 minutes, we will measure your heart rate following consumption and record any data or notes until there is no more. Note that this experiment will need to continue throughout the day, and note that this experiment will likely run for numerous hours. The effects of coffee can take as short as 5 minutes to kick in, but can take several hours for the effects of coffee to begin. We will begin to take down notes on any changes in behavior, and heart rate.

• Depressants ) Start in a controlled environment. Begin meditation, and begin to take down notes on changes in behavior. Respiration, breathing, and others should also be noted and should be well thought out throughout the meditation process. Take down notes: did meditation have any effects on hear-rate? Any changes in breathing patterns, and any changes in behavior? Following meditation, retake the heartrate a few hours later to see if meditation has caused a decrease in heartrate, or if the effects remain the same without or with meditation. 

4. Conclude

A written report detailing the experiment's findings will be delivered to the lab manager. The experiment's methods, the data gathered, the outcomes of the data analysis, and the inferences made as a result of the experiment will all be briefly discussed in the report. This will be published to Ms. Ivy from the Calvin Health Organization team.

This laboratory experiment aims to address the main issue. Our missiom of the lab is : You can learn more about the immediate and long-term impacts of these drugs on human health by contrasting the effects of stimulants (coffee) and depressants (meditation) on heart rate and behavior. After the ingestion and measurement phase is finished, we will compile all the information and notes gathered from both participants. To ascertain the effects of coffee and meditation on heart rate and behavior, the data will be analyzed and interpreted by a specialized team here at Calvin Industries and the Calvins Health Organization.

Scientific Variables

Manipulated Variable

• The manipulated variable refers to the variable that is changing throughout the experiment. In this experiment, the variable that is changing is the substance that we are experimenting with. We are changing the number of stimulants that is being ingested, and we are changing whether or not we are using a stimulant or a depressant. The person is also plays a vital role in the experiment, but we don't have enough participants for an accurate result, so, the person will remain at 2-3 for the time being.

Controlled Variable

• There are numerous variables that remain the same throughout the experiment. The first being the environment. The environment plays a huge role in your heart rate, so we want to try to stay in a controlled and relaxed environment where our heart rate is at normal levels. Other variables that remain the same include the person, the amount that we are ingestion (5 mL every 5 minutes), the time span, and various others.

Responding Variable

• FOCUS QUESTION : How does stimulants and depressants affect our heartrate? 

• We are looking for both quantitative and qualitative data. The quantitative data is the heartrate. How much is the heartrate increasing by per consumption? The qualitative data being behavior. How does caffeine, and the increase in a persons heartrate affect their behavior? Are they more hyper, do they have more energy? How does meditation affect somebody? Does it make them more tired? Does it make them less stressed? These are the main focus questions in today's experiment.

Lab Conclusions

Focus Question: How do stimulants and depressants affect our heart rate short term? How does it affect our health long term? 

The Calvins Health Organization, alongside Calvin Industries and CalvinX, has officially concluded the lab and has come up with a few conclusions. Our main focus here is to mainly look at depressants, and stimulants like caffeine and sleep medicine, which we've substituted for meditation. While our means of experimenting was not the most ideal method, it still gave us some conclusions and gave us some answers which answered our original focus question: how do stimulants and depressants affect our heart rate short term? First, let's focus on stimulants. For this demonstration, we used caffeine.

Caffeine is a stimulant, meaning that it works to speed up your body. We've all heard the saying that caffeine or coffee will make you super hyper and give you a huge energy boost, and that is true. Whether or not the effects are long-term or short-term will vary and is dependent on the person itself. Speaking about dependence, the results we found with caffeine varied a lot. People have different effects and tolerance for caffeine as expected. The participants involved in the lab all showed different responses to the intake of caffeine. For instance, Danhee saw a continuous heart rate of 100 BPM, while Maze saw a declining heart rate. Calvin, on the other hand, saw a heart rate that kept increasing over time, and that depended on the amount of caffeine that I consumed. Therefore, through this experiment, we could conclude that caffeine has no defined effect on a particular person. It depends on different factors like age, weight, lifestyle and health, environment, and various other factors which play a huge role in the beats per minute data. Some other important factors include the dose of caffeine (how much caffeine we consumed), and the health. According to most sources, a moderate amount of caffeine (100 mg, or about one cup of coffee) can raise heart rate by 5–10 beats per minute, with effects typically lasting 30–60 minutes. The heart rate may rise more dramatically with higher caffeine doses. This data did not prove to be apparent in our lab, and the results do vary. In terms of behavior, we saw little to no changes in behavior- as a matter of fact, we saw some of our participants getting more tired despite a higher heart rate and the consumption of caffeine. Maze reported feeling tired after around 10 minutes, and so did Danhee. This shocking discovery led us to believe that the coffee was some sort of depressant which played the opposite effect then what it was intended to. After recording both participants for roughly 5 hours (science until the end of school), we found little to no results in the participants and their intake of coffee.

Danhee saw an increase of 0.00% as his heart rate remained the same throughout the experiment (100 bpm), and Maze saw a decrease of roughly 25% as her heart ate dropped from 112 down to roughly 80, and I showed a little increase of 23.3% from 90 bpm to 111 bpm. Vedanti also contributed a little to the experiment by consuming roughlya quarter of a cup, which we also so little to no difference in the heart-rate. Please note that these tests were all taken in a span of 30 minutes, and were taken in a controlled and peaceful environment. These results highlight the importance of considering individual factors when evaluating the effects of stimulants and depressants on heart rate. Based on this test alone, we were able to conclude that there is no defined heart rate and it varies from individual to individual, and the same goes for the effects of caffeine. From here, we compared our findings with another study which was conducted at the University of Wisconsin–La Crosse.

One hundred and four undergraduate students (26 participants in each condition) from the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse participated in our study. Of the 104 participants, thirty-three were men and 71 were women. The ages of the participants ranged from 18 to 31 years of age, and the mean age of the participants was 20.43 (SD = 2.05). In terms of race, 93.3 % of participants identified themselves as Caucasian, 3.8% identified as Asian, 1.9% identified as Hispanic, and 1% identified as African American. Participants were primarily from a general psychology course, and received class credit for participating in this study. You can learn more about their studies, and their means of experimentation here at their official document. Shockingly enough, this report gave us some news which may give us some clues of what happened during our experiment. The effects of caffeine and decaffeinated coffee on heart rate, maze task reaction time, and self-rated alertness were investigated in a study. The findings showed that the participants' reported intake had a sizable impact on their heart rates. Participants' heart rates were higher than those of participants who actually drank caffeine than of participants who were told they did. For heart rate measure 4 and self-rated alertness (RSSS4), there was a significant interaction between the actual consumption and the amount participants reported they had consumed. In comparison to other combinations of actual consumption and told consumption, participants who actually drank caffeinated coffee and were told they did so had higher heart rates and more alert RSSS scores. For participant reaction times to the maze task, no significant interactions or main effects were discovered.