Heart Rate Lab

When you go for a run, or do any kind of physical activity, you may notice that you start to breathe
heavier and sweat. Have you ever thought about what happens to your heart rate during exercise? In
this activity, you will investigate what happens to heart rate as activity level increases.

Purpose:

Develop a purpose for this lab.

Question:

What happens to a person’s heart rate as that person increases their activity level?

Information/Research:

Gather information on heart rates and how and/or why they fluctuate as a person’s activity level
changes. You should list the information below:

Hypothesis: Using the information gathered above, develop a hypothesis to answer the question asked
above.

Materials: (list all materials used in this lab)

Procedure:

Develop a procedure to complete the lab activity. You will need to include steps for taking your resting
heart rate, walking heart rate and running/jumping jacks heart rate. All activities should be done for one
minute and then your pulse should be recorded immediately afterwards.

Your procedure should be numbered and there should not be any personal pronouns.

Observations:

Design an observation table to record your results for each “activity”, the results of 3 other students for
each “activity”, and the average for all students for each “activity”.

Graph:

You must graph your data and the average data for each activity. This may be done by hand or through
a computer program.

Analysis:

Answer the questions below:

1. Why did you create a group average rather than use data from one person to make conclusions
about the heart rate?

2. What are the independent and dependent variables in this experiment?

3. How did you determine if there was a change in heart rate as the activity level changed?

4. What were the variables that you controlled for in this experiment? (What did you keep the
same?)

5. Explain any patterns or trends you noticed during this experiment.

6. Were there any issues/problems that may have affected the accuracy of your data? Explain.

7. Does your data support your hypothesis? Explain.

Conclusion:

Write a conclusion based on the analysis of your data.

You may use this document as a template to complete your formal lab write up. There will be a link to
this document in the content section on D2L.