Introduction Being a college student in this day in age is never easy. We are always on the move and become stressed very easily. One of the ways students deal with the pressure of ongoing assignments, papers, and various projects is to simply listen to music. Music is very popular to our specific age group, but is consuming different styles of music necessarily a healthy alternate to the stress? How does music affect the heart rate and what different types of music have a greater affect on heart rate? Music most definitely has emotional value. Heart rate can be directly influenced by these emotional changes. Our group decided to test music tempo’s effect on heart rate. This experiment is relevant to one’s health because it is …show more content…

We ran into a few bumps along the road. Our biggest problem was probably testing heart rate prematurely. In the beginning we jumped the gun a lot and measured heart rate as soon as our subject took their headphones out. It took a few tries to realize that we had to give them a minute to see if the effects actually lasted long. Another problem was the background noise. Conducting the experiment in a college dormitory probably was not the brightest idea with all the yelling and running around people do, but we were patient and waited until we were in solitude, then began testing. One way we could have improved this experiment would have been to let the music play from speakers rather than headphones. I feel as if headphones had too much of a direct impact. Hearing the music from speakers would have given the subject more variety concerning the volume, and volume could have definitely played a role in heart rate.
Questions for Further Study One way a future BIO 102 student could pick up on this experiment would be to expand their subjects. Our group tested heart rate on only men. Would women vary as much as men do? Or would they not vary at all? Men and women are completely different on many things so results on this experiment could potentially be different. Another way a student could expand on this experiment would be to limit subjects based on race. Music often varies depending on race. Some music is highly