STEM Heart Rate Homeostasis Lab Write Up
Aiden pester, Henry Zhang, Owen Ondricek, and Shane Taylor
Introduction: When the blood returns to the heart it releases carbon dioxide for the lungs to exhale. An important aspect of cardiovascular homeostasis is heart rate. This results in a nervous response that increases the heart rate, thus maintaining the level of oxygen in your cells and preventing homeostatic imbalance. The reason that we wanted to take this experiment is we want to see if playing a certain genre of video games will effect or heart rate. Our hypothesis is if you play horror games then your heart rate would increase the most.
Abstract: For this lab we tested the effect of different genres of video games on people's heart rates. We wanted to use this to see what was causing people’s heart rates to go up. To find out we tested the fight or flight response with a horror game, action game, and casual game. The fight or flight response releases adrenaline into the bloodstream, increasing heart rate to bring it to muscles that need it. We tested this response by having people play three different games of different genres and recording the heart rate of each person.
Material:
Procedure:
Aiden pester, Henry Zhang, Owen Ondricek, and Shane Taylor
Introduction: When the blood returns to the heart it releases carbon dioxide for the lungs to exhale. An important aspect of cardiovascular homeostasis is heart rate. This results in a nervous response that increases the heart rate, thus maintaining the level of oxygen in your cells and preventing homeostatic imbalance. The reason that we wanted to take this experiment is we want to see if playing a certain genre of video games will effect or heart rate. Our hypothesis is if you play horror games then your heart rate would increase the most.
Abstract: For this lab we tested the effect of different genres of video games on people's heart rates. We wanted to use this to see what was causing people’s heart rates to go up. To find out we tested the fight or flight response with a horror game, action game, and casual game. The fight or flight response releases adrenaline into the bloodstream, increasing heart rate to bring it to muscles that need it. We tested this response by having people play three different games of different genres and recording the heart rate of each person.
Material:
- Get copies of the games Cuphead, Alien: Isolation, and Minecraft
- Three computers with proper specifications to play the games on
- Heart rate monitor or Samsung Galaxy S7 (what we used to test)
- Three timers
Procedure:
- For each person, take their initial heart rate by using the heart rate monitor on the Samsung S7 and then have them rest for 30 minutes without playing any computer games (looking at a phone should be okay) and take their heart rate every 5 minutes, and record these into the data table. These are the control heart rates. Be certain that the person is sitting for the entire 30 minutes.
- Open each game(alien isolation, cuphead, and minecraft) separately on each of the three computers
- Each person takes an initial heart rate and it is recorded in the data table under 0 minutes for the game they plan on playing first.
- One person goes to the first computer and starts playing their game(alien isolation, cuphead, and minecraft). One minute after, the next person goes to the next computer and starts their game, and repeat it for the final person. This is to give some delay so everyone’s heart rates do not need to be checked at the same time. As soon as each person starts playing, start a 30 minute timer for each person and take each person’s heart rate after five minutes
- For Alien: Isolation: it is recommended to begin at the part of the game where the objective is to disable the alarm. It is the earliest part of the game with intensity and starting the time at the very beginning of the game may not give a proper horror environment. If you are not at this part in the game, then do not start the timer until that objective shows up.
- For Cuphead: start the game with the tutorial, and follow this path: Forest Follies (run and gun), then Botanic Panic (boss fight), and then Clip Joint Calamity (boss fight). If each of those is completed before the 30 minutes is up, then continue the game in no particular order until the 30 minutes are up.
- For Minecraft: start the timer as soon as the world loads up. There is no required area to start in because it is the casual game.
- Once all tests are completed, repeat steps 3-7 for each person , except everyone swaps to a new game, after 10 minutes of rest so that the previous game does not affect the initial heart rate of the next. Do this until each person played each game for 30 minutes each.
- Record all data taken in the data table
- Create a line graph of the data in the graph
- Participant one is really bad at our action game he couldn’t even beat one level.
- The action game is really hard
- The horror game is really scary. The participant tend to be more on edge.
Data
The spikes in heart rate in the horror genre of game at 20 and 30 minutes were taken after a jump scare occurred in the game for the person.
At 20 minutes for the action game, the participant had just started to fight the first boss of the game.
At 20 minutes for the action game, the participant had just started to fight the first boss of the game.
At 5 minutes for horror, the alien revealed itself for the first time to the participant
Across the board horror games had the highest average heart rate. This is most likely because your body is preparing to enact in a fight or flight response. This is triggered by your body thinking it is threatened or in a dangerous situation
Discussion: In this test a lot of things went well for example we were able to get really good results for alien isolation, also we were able to take the tests with no interference. In a scientific experiment there is always possible errors, for example in our experiment the heart rate monitor took a long time to take our heart rate so our heart might have calmed down from all the action leading to inaccurate results. Another error we had in our experiment was that we set the three tests really close to each other and didn’t have enough time in between for everyone to take heart rate. This altered some of our timing. We could of improved this experiment by having a better heart rate monitor for having accurate results, and three separate rooms so we could not interfere with each other. This experiment could lead to the investigation of can video games help our hearts for example preventing heart attacks.
Discussion: In this test a lot of things went well for example we were able to get really good results for alien isolation, also we were able to take the tests with no interference. In a scientific experiment there is always possible errors, for example in our experiment the heart rate monitor took a long time to take our heart rate so our heart might have calmed down from all the action leading to inaccurate results. Another error we had in our experiment was that we set the three tests really close to each other and didn’t have enough time in between for everyone to take heart rate. This altered some of our timing. We could of improved this experiment by having a better heart rate monitor for having accurate results, and three separate rooms so we could not interfere with each other. This experiment could lead to the investigation of can video games help our hearts for example preventing heart attacks.
Content
Homeostasis is the interactions inside your body, like the speed your heart beats at and the way you sweat, that keep an equilibrium inside of your body.
Reflection
This lab was quite fun I- think that choosing our own groups really elevated the overall experience. One of my favorite moments was going over to my teammate's house to get our data and although I didn't get to play any of the games I got to "encourage" my teammates to do better at Cuphead. Another peak for me would be playing Alien Isolation in class. Another group needed a test subject for a high stress environment so I offered to play the game because I had it installed on my laptop half the class ended up watching me play, and I ended up getting the pants scared off me. Helping the other group transitions well into my first pit apparently I have high blood pressure ¯\_(ツ)_/¯(oh well). When playing the game they had to test my blood pressure and as far as I know I should be dead, because the number was so high my blood was like maple syrup (maybe in Canadian), but it turns out they were using faulty equipment, so I'm fine. Another pit would have to be the heart sensors we used. The sensors were hard to use because you had to hold the phone in your hand and often it would shake and your results would take a whole minute to get slowing down the experiment.