This is a great interactive activity that helps students determine their hear rate after doing certain physical activities. Students can determine which activity will raise their hear rate the most and the least. This is important to real world problems because if you want to burn calories and lose weight, it would be very helpful to know which physical activities get your heart rate up the most. Also, students can determine how long it takes for their heart rate to go back to its normal rate. This is important because after doing a certain physical activity, it would be helpful to know how long it takes for your heart rate to go to its rest rate.
In this activity, students will be measuring and graphing their heart rates using graphing calculators and a hand held heart rate monitor. Students will perform 3 trials. Trial 1 will consist of rest, marching, and jogging in place. Trial 2 will consist of rest, jogging in place, and running in place. Trial 3 will consist of rest, marching in place, and jumping jacks. Each activity is 1 minute long. Students will create three graphs based on the three trials performed. The hand held heart monitor will be connected to the graphing calculator and graphing calculator will be collecting constant data for each trial. After each trial is completed, the graphing calculator will display the graph for the student. The student will sketch the three graphs on a worksheet: on the worksheet, the students will talk about the rates of change of each parts of the graph (constant, increasing, or decreasing). This activity lines up with the Common Core State Standards by meeting standard CCSS.Math.Content.HSF.IF.B.6. Students will be interpreting the rate of change of the function of their heart rate. They will be interpreting the rate of change symbolically.
The materials needed for this activity are as follows:
- An Easy Link
- TI-84 Calculators
- Hand-Grip Heart Rate Monitors
- What is my Heart Rate? Worksheet
This activity will work better if students work in small groups. Students should be put int groups of 2 or 3. Each student in the group will be completing an experiment of their own. That way each student can be engaged and evaluate their own data.