The expectations for this project are similar to those for the last one.  You must, however, choose a different system to study.  In other words, if you studied human respiration in the first project, you cannot study another feature of human respiration in the second.  Another limitation is that a maximum of three groups are allowed to work on the same experimental system.
     Also, for this project, devising a creative hypothesis will help your grade.  The primary grading criteria will still be clarity (writing style, data presentation), effectiveness of the experimental design, and ability to analyze data.  In addition, however, I will give consideration to the cleverness of your experiment.  Obviously, many of the projects you think of will be variants of those that have been done before, but you should at least strive for a novel experiment.  For example, testing the effect of exercise on the heart rate or blood pressure is a rather ordinary experiment.  A more clever experiment would be to see if the heart rate and metabolic rate go up proportionately (as one group did last year), or to look at both the systolic and diastolic pressures and see if they are affected to the same degree (as another group did).
 

Table 1.  Topics or experimental systems that can be easily investigated in physiology lab
 

 

Human reflexes	Metabolic rates of small animals
Earthworm neurons	Kidney output
Frog muscles (smooth and striated)	Active transport by epithelia
Human respiration and metabolic rate	Blood clotting
The human EKG , blood pressure or heart rate	Activity of the turtle heart
EMG studies of muscle activity	Sensitivity of sensory systems
Circulatory system dynamics (model system)

 We have a number of different transducers for measuring a wide variety of factors.  In addition to the force and movement transducers we have pressure transducers, temperature transducers, light intensity transducers, pulse (heart rate) transducers and chest expansion transducers.  Many things can also be measured without the use of electronics.  We also have a video camera and analysis VCR for monitoring movements.
 
 

Deadlines:
 March 23 (or 24)  (after lab) - Submit a rough outline stating your hypothesis and describing your experimental procedure.  The outline should be less than one page.  It will not be graded.
 April 13 - Submit a draft of your final write-up, this will not be graded.
 April 13 (or 14) - Oral reports.  The format will be the same as with the first project.
 April 20 - Final report due - (late reports are subject to a minimum 10 point penalty.

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