Place two fingers gently on the side of your neck or on the inside of your wrist. Can you feel a soft thump? That is your pulse: your heart beating.
Now notice your breathing. Quiet or busy? Here is today's wonder: does exercise change our pulse and our breathing?
Today's words: pulse (the beat you feel each time your heart pumps) and breathing rate (how many breaths you take in one minute). Your heart and blood vessels make up your circulatory system, and your lungs and airways make up your respiratory system: the lungs take oxygen in from the air, and the heart pumps that oxygen round your body in your blood.
When you move hard, your muscles need more oxygen. What do you think the heart and lungs do about that?
Our wonder is whether exercise changes our pulse and breathing. In pairs, choose the one-minute activity you will test: steady step-ups, high-knee marches, or star jumps.
On your Investigation Journal page, write out the question shown on the board with your own activity named inside it, so the question is yours.
Underneath it, write what you think will happen to both numbers after the activity, and why.
Watch how we time and count. We count pulse beats for exactly 15 seconds, then multiply by 4 to get the rate per minute. Breaths are counted the same way. Each reading is taken twice, and we use the average of the two.
The timer on the board keeps every count exactly the same length, so all our numbers can be compared fairly.
Work in pairs. You each measure your own pulse and breathing. Your partner helps watch the timer and check the multiply-by-4 step, so every number you write is a rate for a full minute.
Who is measured: every number you write is for you (the person whose body you are testing). If you should not exercise, you time and record for your partner only.
1. Sit still. Measure your resting pulse twice (15 seconds × 4 each time) and write the average.
2. Measure your resting breathing twice the same way. Write the average.
3. When the class timer starts, everyone who can exercises together for one full minute, each pair doing the activity they chose (step-ups, high-knee marches, or star jumps) at a steady pace.
4. Straight away, measure your own pulse twice and breathing twice again. Average each pair of readings.
Record all four averages on your Investigation Journal page.
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