Science Buddies: "Ask an Expert"

I haven't started yet on my project: The Effect of Gender on a Person's Pulse and Blood Pressure while Running 1/2 Mile. I didn't buy equipment or started testing. I have written my Introduction and my Procedure (you don't have to read it all):

Introduction

Gender is referred to as the masculinity or femininity of a person. The researcher’s experiment needed gender to observe the effects of it on heart rate. The two genders are male and female. Many variables depend on gender. The two genders are similar in many ways and also different in many ways. Leon’s research needed two gender groups to complete the task of running half a mile.

Think about the body as a factory. The brain would be the businessmen, yelling directions into the workers’ faces. The lungs are the generators, producing enough energy to power the machines. The veins would be the assembly line, bringing the products around and around the factory. Blood cells would be the products, circulating the factory. While the heart would be like a critical machine, pumping out products (Ward, 1981). Got the picture? Every part of the body depends on another. Without the veins, the blood would have no where to go. Without the lungs, there won’t be any oxygen in the blood. Starting from even an unborn baby to a dying person, the heart is an essential living element for all humans. Every minute, the heart pumps out about 5 1/4 quarts of blood; a bit more than the whole body’s blood supply. Everyday, it pumps about 2,000 gallons of blood circulated. In 70 years, it will beat 2.5 billion times and pump out over 50 million gallons of blood! (Ward, 1981) The heart is not only important to us in haleness ways, but also in symbolic ways like in Valentine’s Day which was celebrated as far as in the 7th century. Your pulse can be felt in many areas, including your wrist (radial pulse), windpipe (carotid pulse), and the inside of your elbow which is your brachial pulse. It is measured in b.p.m. units, in other words, beats per minute units (Shari, 1999). A baby’s heartbeat is regulated at about 120 beats per minute, about 40% more than an adult’s heart, at about 70 beats per minute. A slower pulse for the elderly is very common at about 60 beats per minute (Katlin, 2004). The reason age is connected with pulse is since a healthy person’s heart gets bigger, it can pump more blood each pulse with less pulses. As Wiki encyclopedia writes “a person's pulse is the throbbing of their arteries as an effect of the heart beat.�

One object of my experiment would be to find out the connection between gender and pulse rates. The normal pulse rate for a man is at about 72 b.p.m. while on the other hand, a woman’s would be at about 78 b.p.m. This means that a woman’s heart would be faster than a man’s while doing different activities. Generally, it is safe to conclude that people of younger age often have a lower pulse because their heart does not have to work as hard. But this does not mean that a person in their 40s has a higher pulse than someone in their 30s. Factors to take into consideration are the subject's current amount of fitness, any possible substances that could affect heart/breathing rates, and also health history.

The rationale for this research project was to aid doctors and physicians to not be biased by gender for heart rate. The physicians can use my results to accurately measure changes in pulse rates according to gender. Leon was intrigued by the thoughts of the results of the promising project. This project was originally composed when he wanted to practice in the medical field as an eye specialist. He selected this project not only for his interests but also for his family, which has a wide range of resources he can use. For example, the researcher asked his parents, a statistics professor in UVA and a biostatistician working in Anthem, a large health insurance company, for help. Since they were experienced in the statistics and math fields, Leon could ask them for help on charts, percents, and ratios.

And to sum it all up, the independent variable of Leon’s project was gender, while his dependent variable was pulse and blood pressure. His main purpose for the project was to determine how different genders affects heart rate. The control group was established when Leon measured the subjects’ heart rate and blood pressure before doing the activities. The hypothesis for the project was: “If I make 5 human subjects in each gender group run a 1/2 mile of track, then the woman subjects would have a higher pulse rate and blood pressure count than the male subjects.� The researcher believes this hypothesis is right because of his research information stated on pg. 2 and here: “The normal pulse rate for a man is at about 72 b.p.m. while on the other hand, a woman’s would be at about 78 b.p.m.� In conclusion, a woman’s heart rate should beat faster than a man’s during resting times and action.





Procedure

Select ? people to be in each gender group by using incentives.

Age is controlled at the range from 8 to 12 in each gender group. The type of sports is selected as 1/2 mile running.

Measure the subjects’ pulse and blood pressure before starting the experiment of running a 1/2 mile.

Make the subjects run a 1/2 mile in a controlled environment (Cambridge, my neighborhood).

Measure the subjects’ pulse and blood pressure again after running a 1/2 mile.

Repeat steps 3-5 with the same subjects two times for more accurate results.

Calculate the changes of pulse and blood pressure from before running to after running for each gender group and compare.

Make an appropriate conclusion with the collected data.



How big should my gender groups be?
How many times should I test them?
What kind of equipment should I use?

Thanks for any help,
Leon

Hi Leon!

You can try running an answers.com search on "effects of gender on pulse and blood pressure during exercise." Even more important, you can look at how the experiments were designed. I think they have a larger scale than you have in mind, so you may need to reduce the size of some of the projects. An alternate search that you might try is "effects of sex on pulse and blood pressure during exercise."

Since you're going to be working with small samples of people, you want to take great care in selecting your groups. For example, if you picked 5 out-of-shape adult males and 5 in-shape teenage females, you wouldn't know if any differences you saw were due to the difference of out-of-shape versus in-shape, adult versus teenage, or male versus female.

I'd recommend doing something simple such as all of the kids in your gym class. Ask the gym teacher for permission to do your experiment and get some helpers (since it will be too much work for you personally to measure everyone's pulse), or teach the students how to measure their own pulse, which would be easier. Measure everyones pulse beforehand, do the exercise, and then measure afterwards. Hopefully, you'll get a sample of 20 or so people of about the same ages and fitness levels, and about half of each sex.

If you don't do it that way, you're going to end up with too many variables such as age.

And did you learn any lessons about procrastination?

I can't have such a large group size. I can only have 10 people or so in my project. But I can test them 2 times.

Would that work?
Leon

Numbers don't win a battle.
- Narnia the movie

If you already know how big your groups can be, then go for it! Testing multiple times would be good since the before/after numbers will hopefully be the same for each test run.

Assuming that you can get your testing done on Tuesday (I assume you have off from school on Monday), I think you'll be in good shape to finish up.

I think you'll be fine just doing averages of all of the numbers and comparing the changes.