Science Buddies: "Ask an Expert"

hey all my science pals!! i am currently doing my science fair project on "musics effect on heart rate" do you guys happen to know how music effects heart rate if you do please reply. thanks
your pal
jb

Hi joey!

A suggestion: try plugging "how music affects heart rate" into answers.com.
I tried that and got a lot of hits. In addition, you might try searching through the other sites mentioned in my posting "Search Sites," which has a last posting date of 9/22.

Joey,

I would caution you about your topic. It is very difficult to do experiments on humans for a number of reasons. Often there are just to many variables out of your control. I would highly reccomend doing this study on animals such as mice if you have the lab capabilities. If not, I would suggest considering a different topic.

Just Blaze
Joe this is a really serious topic you must use all cation. Its really hard to do stuff on humans.

joeyblaze wrote: hey all my science pals!! i am currently doing my science fair project on "musics effect on heart rate" do you guys happen to know how music effects heart rate if you do please reply. thanks
your pal
jb

Ok....first, if you do this, it is you who will tell us how music affects heart rates. That's the point of doing the experiment.

I concur with the other posters though. Heart rates are affected by all of:

1. age of person
2. whether the person exercises regularly
3. medication the person might be taken
4. emotional state of the person
5. recent physical exertion

It would be very difficult to separate the effects of music from all these other effects, unless you stuck to a single individual. Even then all you might be measuring is their emotional response to the music, which another individual might not react to at all in the same way.