Homeostasis Lab

The purpose of this lab was to become more familiar with homeostasis and how it works with the human body.  My lab team and I decided to test how pulse reacts to skin temperature.  If the temperature of the skin was lowered, we believed the pulse would go up to keep the skin warmer but if we heated the skin then the pulse would go down to help cool it.
Seeing as I didn't have a freezer or oven big enough to stick our entire bodies in we had to settle for sticking our hands in buckets of water.
We held our temperature probe (it looked like a probe I'm calling it a probe) in one hand for one minute each and measured our pulse from our necks with our fingers for one minute.  After we had our base temperatures and pulses for comparison we stuck our hands in ice water at about 30 degrees Fahrenheit, one at a time, for one minute and then measured temperature and pulse for one minute.  Once our hands returned to normal temperature we followed the same procedure, only we stuck our hands in hot water that was around 100 degrees Fahrenheit.

This awesome graph shows all the measurements we got for pulse and temperature at normal, cold, and hot temperatures.

In the end, we determined that if you got cold your pulse would slow down, most likely to conserve heat energy to the core of the body.  And, if you got hot, your pulse would speed up to keep the core cool.  Our hypothesis was backwards but we were on the right track.
Next time, my results will be more drastic because I'll find an oven.