Working Muscles - A Clothespin Activity

Paragraph: This project was painful and fun. I think it is painful because your working two muscles 30 seconds 10 times, does that not sound painful to you? I thought it was fun because we got to realize what our muscles do overtime from getting tired and everybody was laughing at each others faces because it hurt so much. My favorite part about the project was realizing what muscles do overtime when they are fatigue. Me least favorite part about the project is having to do it 10 times! After each trial, your fingers would get more numb and fatigue. Overall this project was really fun and I loved that we got to learn what muscles do overtime when they are fatigue.

Questions

• Write a one paragraph reflection, ( Above ) and answer the following questions:   

1. Was it difficult to use the same technique throughout the whole experiment?
2. How did you hands and fingers feel BEFORE, DURING, and AFTER the experiment?
3. Describe how your data changed over time.
4. What errors or inconsistencies might have affected your results?
5. Why did your hand strength change over the course of this experiment?
6. How do you think your muscle cells get oxygen, nutrients, and water to make the energy they need to function?
7. What do you think you could have done to prevent your muscles from tiring?
8. What should you do if you experience muscle fatigue in the future?

Answers

1. It was difficult to use the same technique throughout the whole experiment. I think this because overtime in this experiment, you get fatigue and you feel the pain and want to switch hands so badly but you know you can't. After the third trial, I felt like my hand was about to explode. Another reason it was difficult was because you only got to second breaks in between! If you subtract the time of pinching and the how long all of your breaks are combined, it feels like after the whole project, that you pinched a clothespin for about 3 minutes and 33 seconds straight! 
2. Before the experiment my hands felt energized and jumpy to pinch a clothespin. During the project my hands regretted doing this, they felt very fatigue, and numb. After the project my fingers felt numb, sore, and some really odd feeling that I can't really explain.
​3. On my first trial I did well andI then suddenly went down and down and then I got a little better each trial.
4. One error is that people were running around the room while pinching and saying that it helps with the fatigue was distracting. I might of lost my exact number and my graph is not exact but it is still accurate.
5. The hand strength changed over time during the experiment because it got used to the fatigue and said to itself fight through it. On the outside it still felt painful to do it when I gained pinches.
6. I think the muscle cells get oxygen, nutrients, and water from what we do. We get oxygen by breathing it in. We get nutrients by eating healthy foods. We get water fro drinking water and staying hydrated.
​7. During the 10 second breaks I could have got a quick sip of water, and shaking or stretching your finger muscles. Water keeps your muscles healthy and not tired along with nutrients and oxygen and shaking or stretching your muscles wares off the pain.
8. During the spring, I do lacrosse and have experienced muscle fatigue. Running back and forth on an 110 yard field is tough and you do experience muscle fatigue in your legs. What I do is drink lots of water and stretch out the muscles. One year we had healthy snacks during halftime to get nutrients in our body.