These Human Body experiment lessons should be used with lessons about the scientific method (especially if your school does a science fair). Each experiment in the series will identify the following topics:

• Question

• Hypothesis

• Materials

• Experiment

  o Procedure

  o Control, independent, and dependent variable

• Results

• Conclusion

When explaining an experiment to the students, refer back to the scientific method. This will help the students understand these concepts in an applied setting. Hopefully, this will also help in their experiment idea generation or help them correctly identify their controls and variables within an already established experiment. Another option for the human body experiment series is to teach these lessons as the students learn about the human body, specifically as a follow-up to the Great River Lesson.

When someone is a “natural” at a sport, what does that mean? For some, they were born to play a specific sport. Tall people tend to play basketball players or volleyball, while large muscular athletes play football or rugby. Someone with a broad back, long arms, and powerful legs makes a perfect swimmer. If you see an athlete missing teeth, it probably is a hockey player (just kidding). We think we can spot a good athlete by their body shape, but plenty of exceptional athletes may not fit the mold, yet they are considered a “natural.” What do they have that separates them from the rest of the pack?

What enables an athlete to track a ball over 100 mph and hit it with a bat or a racket? How do athletes avoid a punch moving at the speed of a snakebite? Amazing athletes have fantastic reaction time, or the body’s ability to rapidly take in information and make a coordinated response. Many athletes we say are “naturals” have exceptional reaction times. Were these athletes born that way, or did it improve over time? Can someone train to improve reaction time, or is it genetically built into their nervous system? That is the question of this experiment.

Materials: 

·      An ample play space with a hard surface suitable for a bouncing tennis ball

·      At least one tennis ball per student

Minimum Amount of Students Needed: This experiment needs at least two students. One will act as the control that does not practice, and one student will be the independent variable and practice. However, analyzing the results of this experiment works much better with many more students.

Age: Upper elementary and middle school