The purpose of this experiment is to determine if gender in tenth graders affects resting and jogging pulse rate.

Problem:

The purpose of this experiment is to determine if gender in tenth graders affects resting and jogging pulse rate.

Background

Factors affecting heart rate:

• Size: the larger the size, the slower the rate. For example, a grizzly bear has a heart rate of about 30 beats a minute while a hummingbird’s is about 200 beats per minute.
• Gender: a woman's heart rate is generally faster than a man's.
• Age: generally the younger a person is, the faster the heart rate. An infant's heart rate is about 120 beats per minute; a child's is around 100; an adult's is between 70 and 80; an elderly person generally hovers in the 60s.
• Exercise: temporarily increases the heart rate.
• Stimulation of the autonomic nerves.
• Hormones: influence heart rate, especially epinephrine, norepinephrine, and thyroid hormones, all of which can increase the rate.
• Pathology: certain diseases affect heart rate, causing it either to slow or to race. Either one sets the stage for further dysrhythmias.
• Medications and drugs: For example, digitalis slows the rate, while epinephrine (Adrenalin) increases it. Caffeine can also cause palpitations or extra beats.

(Copied from the website http://www.innvista.com/health/anatomy/pulse.htm  visited on 22/08/2010)

HYPOTHESIS

My hypothesis is that a tenth grade female’s pulse rates will be higher than the male’s pulse rates. It is based on the words: “Gender: a woman's heart rate is generally faster than a man's.”

Variables:

Independent: The gender and the exercise
Dependent: Pulse rate at that point
Constant:

1.        Age group of subjects (in years)

2.        BMI (same group)

3.        Location (brachial) where the pulse is taken.

4.        The number of test subjects from each gender

5.        The state of the body at the particular time(sitting for two minutes and jogging for two minutes)

Manipulation of the Variables:

The manipulated variable was the gender of each test group. As the gender changes the pulse should change. As the research says women have slightly higher pulse rate. The second manipulated variable was the exercise. The responding variable was the number of beats per minute in each gender. To measure the responding variable I will take the brachial pulses of each subject three times, find the mean of the two separate genders and find the differences between each gender.  (the jogging and resting is just used as crosschecking whether females have higher B.P.M. than males.

Materials:

Quantity	Amount
5	Grade 10 Male students
5	Grade 10 Female students
1	Chair
1	Stopwatch/Watch

Diagram

Procedure:

1.        First gather permissions from the test subjects

2.        Then one by one bring the test subjects for the investigation

3.        Each would sit for two minutes

4.        Then their pulse rate would be taken for two minutes and then divided by two.

5.        After this the subject would be told to run for two minutes

6.        Their pulse rate would be taken for thirty second.

7.        For each subject the test would be conducted on the same day

8.        The next two days again they would be called and would repeat the steps from 3-7.

9.        The average would help us analyse whether our hypothesis was correct and give a more reliable conclusion

Safety Precautions:

Few safety measures should be kept in mind:

·         The person should not be hyper or sad or any such emotion. The emotions can really affect the heart rate

·         The person should not have any kind of bleeding or wound, it can affect pulse rate speeding it up

·         He/she should not be fasting or having diet control (applies for diet controllers and religious believers)

DATA PROCESSING

BMI:   All are in range of normal band(from 18.5 to 24.9)

Resting:

The recorded data:

MALE
Subject:	TRY 1	TRY 2	TRY 3	Average
Subject a	79	81	78	79.33
Subject b	83	80	84	82.33
Subject c	81	82	79	80.67
Subject d	74	72	75	73.67
Subject e	79	78	80	79.00
Subject f	84	85	82	83.67
Average of all the males:				79.78
FEMALE
Subject:	TRY 1	TRY 2	TRY 3	Average
Subject 1	86	85	86	85.67
Subject 2	84	82	85	83.67
Subject 3	79	79	82	80.00
Subject 4	88	89	86	87.67
Subject 5	85	84	84	84.33
Subject 6	83	84	83	83.33
Average of all the females:				84.11

RESULTS

Originally the problem was to investigate if gender affects the tenth grade resting and jogging pulse rates.

The results of the experiment were that the overall B.P.M. of the females was in fact higher than the males by four beats.  The overall female average was 84.11 B.P.M. and the overall for males was 79.78 B.P.M.

See graph below:

Jogging:

The recorded data:

MALE
Subject:	TRY 1	TRY 2	TRY 3	Average
Subject a	116	114	118	116.00
Subject b	107	110	105	107.33
Subject c	105	103	106	104.67
Subject d	100	108	105	104.33
Subject e	110	105	115	110.00
Subject f	121	123	119	121.00
Average of all the males:				110.56
FEMALE
Subject:	TRY 1	TRY 2	TRY 3	Average
Subject 1	120	125	122	122.33
Subject 2	128	130	124	127.33
Subject 3	127	128	126	127.00
Subject 4	126	123	128	125.67
Subject 5	122	119	126	122.33
Subject 6	125	124	128	125.67
Average of all the females:				125.06

RESULTS

Originally the problem was to investigate if gender affects the tenth grade resting and jogging pulse rates.

The results of the experiment were that the overall B.P.M. of the females was also higher than the males by fourteen point five beats.  The overall female average was 125.05 B.P.M. and the overall for males was 110.56 B.P.M.

See graph below:

A data can also be derived comparing the B.P.M. affected by resting and jogging:

Subject	Rest B.P.M.	Jogging B.P.M.	Increase
Subject a	79.33	116.00	36.67
Subject b	82.33	107.33	25.00
Subject c	80.67	104.67	24.00
Subject d	73.67	104.33	30.67
Subject e	79.00	110.00	31.00
Subject f	83.67	121.00	37.33
Subject 1	85.67	122.33	36.67
Subject 2	83.67	127.33	43.67
Subject 3	80.00	127.00	47.00
Subject 4	87.67	125.67	38.00
Subject 5	84.33	122.33	38.00
Subject 6	83.33	125.67	42.33
Average	81.94	117.81	35.86

A graph illustrating the above data is:

Results

The results of the average show that when a tenth grader jogs his/her pulse rate increases by 35.86 B.P.M. from the normal. Thus if we run or jog for about two minutes the general pulse rate would increase by so much.

Conclusion

My hypothesis was that the female pulse rates would be higher than the males’ pulse rates.

The results indicate that this hypothesis should be accepted. This is because the female overall average was 84.11 B.P.M. and the males’ overall average was 79.78 B.P.M.  This indicates that on average 10th grade females B.P.M. are 4 beats higher than the male B.P.M at rest. After jogging, overall female B.P.M. was 125.05 and the overall for males was 110.56 B.P.M having a 14 beats difference. It is clear that my hypothesis was correct. Also it shows that when we jog, for this specific band the beats increase by a large number.

This was for the normal band which proves that girls of grade ten have a higher pulse rate than the female; however I wonder how other bands of BMI would have difference in and how B.P.M. would differ in athletes.

Evaluation:

The investigation went quite well however there were few drawbacks which being a grade ten student was not possible to meet. Firstly the controlling of variables was the toughest. Specially because each person has different metabolism and body structure and unique so controlling their emotions the pace at which they run was not controlled. And more over the sample was small compared to the millions of people in this world. BMI was categorised in a band which could have been a specific number if the total students in grade ten of my school having the age of 15 was hard to get. The data interpreted and analysed will not be that accurate and useful but would give a general idea. Because of shortage of time I couldn’t create a more effective report, but now I have a better idea in this topic so if I were to conduct this project again I would have a larger sample size so I could improve the accuracy rate of this experiment and of a different BMI band so that I can compare these two data.

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