Heart Rate - Experimentation

Goals:

• Write a research question to examine the relationship between exercise (cause) and the change in heartrate (effect).

• Design your own lab (in groups) on feedback mechanisms to maintain homeostasis.

  1. Your experiment should include a minimum of your test subjects conducting 1 experiment a minimum of 3 times (e.g. 3 sets of 25 jumping jacks at a cadence of one per second)

  2. You should be able to separate your test subjects into two or more groups so that you can compare various groups (e.g. boys v. girls, or athletes v. non-athletes) 

• Draw a conclusion from the data you have collected.

• Evaluate the effectiveness of your experiment.

Be sure your research question meets the following criteria: 

• Be Specific: Your question should be clear and focused. A good research question often starts with “how,” “what,” or “why.”

• Make It Measurable: Ensure that the question can be answered through experiments or observations you can realistically conduct.

• Ensure Relevance: The question should contribute to understanding the topic better and offer insights that are significant in the context of your studies.

What makes a good research question? 

• Clear and focused. In other words, the question should clearly state what the writer needs to do.

• Not too broad and not too narrow. The question should have an appropriate scope. If the question is too broad it will not be possible to answer it thoroughly within the word limit. If it is too narrow you will not have enough to write about and you will struggle to develop a strong argument.

• Not too easy to answer. For example, the question should require more than a simple yes or no answer.

• Not too difficult to answer. You must be able to answer the question thoroughly within the given timeframe and word limit.

• Researchable. You must have access to a suitable amount of quality research materials, such as academic books and refereed journal articles.

• Analytical rather than descriptive. In other words, your research question should allow you to produce an analysis of an issue or problem rather than a simple description of it.

Quantitative Data:

• Create a spreadsheet to collect all of your data. 

• You should have a column for each of the qualities (age, athlete, gender, etc.) and quantities you will be collecting. Please use the Human Reaction Time data table as a guide.  

Qualitative Observations:

• Paragraph or bullets

• Only put relevant data into your data table (color of shirt is not that important)