Investigating Heart Rate
- There are a wide range of factors that influence the heart rate of an organism
- Experiments can be designed to investigate the effect of a named variable on an organism's heart rate
- These experiments are commonly done using invertebrates, e.g. Daphnia, as well as vertebrates, e.g. humans
- Care needs to be taken during these experiments to ensure that no test subjects are harmed
- Some of the factors that can influence heart rate include
- Drugs
- Caffeine
- Alcohol
- Sex i.e. male or female
- Weight
- Height
- Temperature
- Diet
- Dehydration
- When designing experiments investigating a single factor, it is essential to control other variables
- Heart rate investigations can be used to study the relationship between heart structure and function