What We Did
Ths purpose of this project was to learn about what homeostasis is, and why it is important to our body. In order to get a deeper understanding of those concepts, each group got to choose a single body sytem to focus on, and conduct an experiment that showed how homeostasis worked in that particular system. This helped nake a big concept, such as homeostasis, much less general, which in my opinion made the learning process much clearer and more specific. My group, Tara, Ashley, Michelle, and I, chose to focus on how homeostasis efected the respiratory system. Our experiment was fairly simple, but clearly demonstrated the homeostasis process. We conducted a running experiment which consisted of having 2 physically fit boys and 2 physically fit girls run certain distances (100m, 200m, and 400m) around the track at an Marin High. Before we had the participants begin running, we measured their resting breathing rates, or how many breaths they normally took in a minute, and then timed how long it took them to get back to that number of breaths per minute after they ran.
Results
Our Particpants were two girls, (Participants 1 and 2) and 2 boys (Participants 3 and 4) We found that it took about an additional 30 seconds for the participant to return to resting breathing rate after more distance was aded to the run. Participant 1 had a resting breathing rate of 24 breaths per minute and took 1 minute to get back to resting breathing rate after running the 100m, 2.2 mins after 200m and 3 mins after 400m. Participant 2 had a resting breathing rate of 35 and took 1 minute after 100m, 2 minutes after 200m and 2.5 minutes after 400 m. Participant 18 had a resting breathing rate of 20, and participant 4 had a resting breathing rate of 21.They both took 1.5 minutes after running the 100m, 2 after 200m, and 2.5 after 400m to return to that normal rate of breaths per minute.
Content
All these concepts are need to know information when looking at the respiratory sytem and homeostasis.
Homeostasis- how the body maintains itself through various interdepentent cycles
Respiratory System- the set of organs that allows a person to breathe and exchange oxygen and carbon dioxide throughout the body
Resting Breathing Rate- the number of times a person inhales within a minute
Gas Exchange- The primary function of the lungs; transfer of oxygen from inhaled air into the blood and the transfer of carbon dioxide from the blood into the exhaled air
Lungs- responsible for getting oxygen into the body, and exhaling "toxins"
Oxygen- a gas in the air that we need to survive
Carbon Dioxide- waste product of our bodies
Homeostasis- how the body maintains itself through various interdepentent cycles
Respiratory System- the set of organs that allows a person to breathe and exchange oxygen and carbon dioxide throughout the body
Resting Breathing Rate- the number of times a person inhales within a minute
Gas Exchange- The primary function of the lungs; transfer of oxygen from inhaled air into the blood and the transfer of carbon dioxide from the blood into the exhaled air
Lungs- responsible for getting oxygen into the body, and exhaling "toxins"
Oxygen- a gas in the air that we need to survive
Carbon Dioxide- waste product of our bodies
Reflection
Overall, i think this project was very helpful in allowing me to achieve a much deeper and clearer understanding of homeostasis. We got to choose our groups, so I got to work with my friends. This helped us keep our energy up during the project, and all of us kept a more positive outlook when we ran into problems or setbacks. One of my favorite aspects of this project was how much freedom we had in the regard of choosing what experiment to conduct. We had almost no restrictions on what body system to focus on, or what experiment to do/how to run it. This made a lot of groups feel very in control of their experiemtns. Thats one of the things my group did well. We took control of our experiement and got the tsting phase of the project done very quickly and efficiently. Another thing we did very well was collaboration. Since we all knew each other so well, we had very little trouble working together seamlessly. For example, when choosing what to do for our experiment, there was no hesistation to share new ideas or speak up, and also we felt free to express conserns and possible revisions. This freedom within the group hlped create a more thorough project. However, we did have some setbacks. One thing we could have done better was dividing up the work. For example, our final product had to be a 1 slide presentation coupled with a research article explaining the results of our experiement. Instead of properly dividing up who should do what, all 4 of us worked on the slideshow, and then all 4 of us moved on to the article. This made for very detailed work, but we ran out of time and had to do a lot at home. One thing I could do better personally was knowing when to take a leadership role, and when to step down. A lot of times, I find myself naturally assuming the role of a leader in a group, but in this group there were a lot of "leader personalities" and that occasionally lead to us clashing. I would like to further develop the abilility to both be able to step up and step down when needed.