Don't Skip a Beat: The Relationship Between Tempo and Heart Rate
Human Health and Behavior- Grade:
- 8
- Teacher:
- Naomi Oesterle
We began our project with brainstorming and voting on ideas. We asked the question, does the tempo of music change the rate a student can memorize 15 words in a minute. Our hypothesis was slower music would decrease the amount of words memorized, and the faster music would increase the words memorized. We searched for three classical music segments, one with a tempo below the average heart rate, one at the average heart rate, and one above the average heart rate. Once we were equipped with everything we needed, we began the experiment. We decided to play the music for one minute while the students were memorizing the 15 words given to them. After a minute, they were given another minute to write everything they remembered down. First, we would use a control with no music; then we played slow, average, and fast paced music then recorded the results. Next, we put the results in our online science fair notebooks and made graphs of the information. Our hypothesis was almost correct, the fast paced music had the best results, slow paced music had the second best results, the music at the average heart rate was the third best, and no music had the worst results. However, these results left us with some questions, we wondered if music preference had any effect on memorization. We also wondered if music with lyrics had a different effect on focus.