Mini Lab: Fear, Excitement, Relaxation, and Action Potentials
Challenge: Design one method for eliciting fear, excitement, or relaxation. Use an EKG to compare the heart's electrical activity at baseline and during your method. All work goes in your notebook.
1. Design your test
Choose one response: fear, excitement, or relaxation. Design one mild method to elicit it. Describe exactly what the volunteer will experience. Get your plan approved by Ramsey before you go on.
2. Identify your variables
An EKG records electrical activity at the skin that reflects coordinated action potentials across cardiac tissue.
- Independent variable: the one thing you will test, such as a brief jump scare, an exciting clip, or guided breathing.
- Dependent variable(s): what you will measure on the EKG to see whether your method had an effect. You can measure more than one thing, such as spacing between repeating peaks, peak height, or cycle frequency.
- Control variables: the things you will keep constant so you know any change comes from your independent variable.
3. Write your research question
"How does [independent variable] affect the electrical activity of the heart, as measured by [your EKG measurement(s)], compared with baseline?"
4. Design and run your experiment
Write a numbered procedure that includes baseline trials, trials with your method, recovery between trials, and your comparison. Build one data table that captures trial, condition, each EKG measurement with units, and a brief observation. Get Ramsey's approval before collecting data.
5. Write your conclusion
- Make a claim about how the EKG feature or features you measured changed during your method compared with baseline.
- Support it with quantitative evidence from repeated trials, including units.
- Use autonomic nervous system signaling and cardiac action potentials to explain the pattern.
- Name one limitation or alternative explanation.