Clothespin Experiment Lab Report

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Hypothesis

The hypothesis of this experiment is resting beforehand will increase the rate of clothespin squeezing.

Materials and Methods

Materials
20 Clothespins (1 for each participant)
Stopwatch/Timer
20 people

Procedure

For this lab, the student gathered 20 people and split them into pairs. In this experiment 10 people are going to exercise, and 10 people are going to rest. The student gave each person a clothespin. In each pair, Student 1 is going to be exercising before squeezing a clothespin and Student 2 is going to be resting before squeezing the clothespin (independent variable). First, Student 1 began doing 15 jumping jacks and 10 pushups while Student 2 rested for 1 minute. When Student 1 completed the jumping jacks …show more content…

The data does not support the students hypothesis because it was incorrect. A possible explanation for these results is when you exercise your blood starts flowing throughout your body which causes the muscles to move faster and the amount of clothespin squeezes to increase. When a person exercises the blood flow of the person increases. When the blood flow increases, the person's level of oxygen also increases and then, when oxygen is delivered to the muscles a process called anaerobic respiration occurs. When you rest, not a large amount of oxygen is getting to your muscles which leads to the increase of lactic acid, and the lactic acid causes your muscles to fatigue. When muscle fatigue occurs, you are not able to squeeze the clothespin as many times. This data and explanation prove that exercising beforehand will increase the rate of clothespin …show more content…

One possible source of error is the test subjects might have not accurately counted the number of times the clothespin was squeezed. Also, the test subjects might have not fully opened or closed the clothespin which effects the times it was squeezed. It is very important to control the variables when investigating human subjects because all humans are different. Not all humans bodies are the same and they don’t respond or react the same way to different things. Three additional variables that may have influenced the outcome of the experiment is some test subjects worked harder than others and took it more seriously, which causes some subjects to be more tired. Another variable is how durable the clothespin is. If the clothespin is deformed before or during the experiment, it can affect how many times the clothespin is squeezed because it is not working correctly. Lastly, one more variable is the motivation and wanting to participate to squeeze the clothespin as many times as possible. If the person has more motivation, it is most likely the person will squeeze the clothespin more

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