A Day in the Life of Your Heart Science Fair Project Alexa Olea

What effect does exercise and physical activity have on heart rate? Question What effect does exercise and physical activity have on heart rate?

I wanted to find out …How a heart rate changes when you exercise? I suspected that a heart rate goes faster you exercise, but wanted to see how fast the heart rate gets back to normal after exercising because that is measure of someone’s health.

Materials Stopwatch Lab notebook Graph paper 10 volunteers

Method For Volunteers: Step 1: Take the pulse, while resting, count the beats for 6 seconds then multiply the count by 10 to find the heart rate for 1 minute. Record the 1 minute heart rate Step 2: Next, do jumping jacks for 1 minute. Step 3: Take pulse again for 6 seconds then multiply by 10 to find the heart rate for 1 minute. Step 4: Finally, rest for 2 minutes then take and record the pulse one last time.

hypothesis I hypothesized that participants heart will beat faster when they are exercising because they are moving they need the heart to circulate the blood. When you are not moving your heart slows down.

observations I observed that everyone had a faster heart rate right after they did jumping jacks. I saw that the people who exercise the most could go back to resting heart rate within 1 minute. This is called recovery time. People who rated themselves as “less active” had hard time going back to there recovery time.

Participant Data Fitness Level Key A= no exercise B=30 minutes/3 days/ week C=1 hour/ week D=more than I hour every day

My data showed Resting heart rates were about the same for each person. Ms. Paulson, who reported that she was very active, had a resting heart rate of 90, after she did the jumping jacks she climbed to 120, then she recovered to 70 within a minute. One student, who reported that he was less active, had a resting heart rate of 70. When he was doing the jumping jacks he had a 120, but he could not recover within 1 minute to his resting heart rate.

Conclusion My hypothesis was partially correct because almost everyone had a faster heart rate when they did the jumping jacks. There was one person that had a slower heart rate when she was doing the jumping jacks. I think reason she had a slower heart rate was because she is really active even though she is not “exercising”.

I learned It is important to exercise so that you can have a strong heart rate. I also learned that people who exercise a lot have a slower heart rate when they are resting, which means their heart doesn’t have to work that hard to rest. However, when they exercise they have a strong heart rate. When they stop exercising the recovery time to bring their heart rate back to resting is quick. A quick recover time is good that means you are healthy.

What I want to learn… I want to learn what other exercises change your pulse when you do other things such as swimming.

You should Test your resting heart rate, your heart rate right after exercising, and your heart rate a minute after you exercise. You can find out if you are healthy or not and then make changes to your lifestyle if necessary.