Student Experiment

Report

Biology: Heart-rate and

the Effect of Exercise
Name: Daniel Hsieh Figure A- Biology of Exercise (sciencedirect.com, 2022)
Class: SCI092H
Teacher: Ms Kerruish
Final word count: 997 words

Background:
The natural body is constantly adapting to the environment around us through a process called
homeostasis causing the organs in our body to work together to maintain stability (Britannica, 2022).
Exercise is movement of your body that is of higher intensity of your normal resting position
(medicalnewstoday.com, 2019). The main organ system that helps maintain homeostasis during exercise
is the Circulatory System. During exercise, the circulatory system transports more oxygen and carbon
dioxide around the body to keep up with the increased metabolic activity (ncbi.nlm.nih.gov, 2022). Other
systems also activate during exercise including the Musculoskeletal, Respiratory and Endocrine system.

Research Question:
How do different intensities of exercise affect the change in human heart-rate?

Justified Hypothesis:
It is predicted that if the intensity of the exercise is increased, then the heart-rate will also increase. This
is because the higher the intensity of exercise, the more oxygen the body requires which speeds up the
hearts pumping rate.

Variables Table:

Independent Variable Dependent Variable Controlled Variables

Identify: Intensity of exercise Identify: Change in heart-rate Identify and Describe:
Describe: Subject will perform Describe: The heart-rate will be Time- the time measured for
three levels of exercise: measured for each of the each intensity will be the same-
- No exercise- sitting different intensities of exercise 5 minutes
down to observe the change in heart- Instruments- the instruments
- Low intensity- walking rate. This will be measured used to measure each intensity
up and down the stairs using a heartbeat monitor will be kept the same: a
(rate of 80 steps per measured in bpm. stopwatch and a metronome
minute) The subject- the subject will
- High intensity- running remain the same for each
up and down the stairs intensity of the exercise
(rate of 160 spm)
Modification to the methodology:

- The original experiment only had 1 trial for each intensity. By increasing to 3 trials per intensity,
the reliability was improved.
- Two different people were used for Subject A and B which introduces many unwanted variables
including different fitness levels and health conditions. By making only one person do the
experiment, the accuracy was improved.
- The accuracy was also improved by changing the choice of experiment- using a metronome to
make sure the pace of the intensity was accurate, a stop watch and a heartbeat monitor to
accurately measure the pulse.

Risk Assessment:

Risk Items Management

Proactive Reactive
Tripping on the stairs The stairs - Look at the stairs - Place an ice pack on
when walking bruised area
- Hold the hand rails - If bleeding, stop the
bleeding by pressing down
area with a clean tissue
Dehydration The sun, heat - Take off any - Rehydrating the body by
excessive clothing drinking water
e.g. jumpers, - Bring subject to a cool
- Perform activity in area
a cool area
Sunburns Sun, heat - To perform - Run water over exposed
experiment under area
shade - Take subject undercover
- Apply sunscreen or or to cool area
cover exposed skin

Results:

Subject Heart beats per minute (bpm)

Resting Heart-rate After 5 minutes
Trial 1 Trial 2 Trial 3 Trial 1 Trial 2 Trial 3
No exercise 48 49 48 48 49 49
Walking 55 55 48 79 96 94
Running 55 60 50 110 126 117
Calculations:

Intensities Sample Calculations:

Mean 𝚺x
( 𝑟𝑒𝑠𝑡𝑖𝑛𝑔) x̄ =
𝑛
48 + 49 + 48
=
3
= 48.33
48 + 49 + 49
(𝐴𝑓𝑡𝑒𝑟 5 𝑚𝑖𝑛𝑢𝑡𝑒𝑠) x̄ =
3
= 48.66

Difference 𝐷𝑖𝑓𝑓𝑒𝑟𝑒𝑛𝑐𝑒 = 48.66 − 48.33

= 0.33

Graph:

How the intensity of exercise impacts the change in

heartrate
80
Difference in heartrate (bpm)

70
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
No exercise Walking (80bpm) Running (160bpm)
Intensity of exercise (spm)

Trial 1 Trial 2 Trial 3 Average

Processing and Data Analysis:

The relationship between the difference in heart-rate and the intensity of exercise is linear. As the
intensity of exercise (spm) increases, the difference in heart-rate (bpm) increases at a similar rate. This
can be seen when the intensity of exercise increases from 80spm to 160spm, the average difference in
heart-rate increases similarly, from 37bpm to 62.67bpm. The reason why this trend occurred is because
as the intensity of exercise increases, the amount of oxygen the body needs also increases. The
circulatory system responds by pumping out more blood containing oxygen and nutrients. Therefore, if
the intensity of exercise is increased, the heart-rate will also increase.
Evaluation:

The resting heart-rate was not always the same (e.g. 60bpm and 48bpm). By not having the starting
heart-rate remain the same throughout may interfere with the accurate change in heart-rate. This could
make some change in heart-rates much more significant compared to others (e.g. 55bpm and 67bpm).
As the data was not consistent throughout, it decreased the reliability and validity of the experiment. An
improvement that can be made is to ensure the subject’s heart-rate have completely returned to its
resting heart-rate before starting the next section of the experiment. This would improve the reliability
by cancelling out any unwanted variables and the accuracy would improve as the data would be closer
to each other.

Another problems with the experiment was that there was no data in between the starting heart-rate
and the final heart-rate that could help measure the change. This impacts the accuracy of the
experiment as not enough data was collected. This could make it harder to measure the exact change of
heart-rate. To improve this, the subject’s heart-rate could be collected every minute to demonstrate the
change in heart-rate. By doing this, it would become much easier to represent the change in heart-rate
resulting in a better accuracy.

Conclusion:

The aim of this experiment was to find out whether the prediction ‘that if the intensity of the exercise is
increased, then the heart-rate will also increase’ is true. As the graph has proven, when the intensity
increases, the heart-rate increases at a similar rate. For example, when the intensity increased from
60spm to 120spm the heart-rate increased similar from 60 to 126 bpm. It can be seen that the
hypothesis is correct because when the intensity of exercise increases, the body requires for oxygen
causing the heart to pump faster. Therefore, different intensities of exercise does affect the change in
human heart-rate.

Reference List:

Felman, A. (n.d.). Exercise: Health benefits, types, and how it works.

https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/153390
Homeostasis | Definition, Function, Examples, & Facts. (n.d.). Encyclopedia Britannica.
https://www.britannica.com/science/homeostasis
Integrative Biology of Exercise. (2014). Cell, 159(4), 738-749.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0092867414013178
Patel, P. N., & Zwibel, H. (2022). Physiology, Exercise. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK482280/