Procedural Notes
- The Blood Pressure Sensor was occasionally temperamental. It might have been the sensor I was using, but occasionally data seemed to record properly, but the calculations did not and blood pressure measurements were not correctly displayed. I tried repeating the measurement without disconnecting the sensor, and got what appeared to be a reliable result.
- Occasionally, the blood pressure result looked reasonable, but the heart rate seemed very high. Again, just repeating the measurement without adjusting anything seemed to work.
- If you are pressed for time, the cooling curve data can be collected over a shorter interval than 10 minutes. If you use a shorter interval, increase the number of samples per minute to increase the amount of data collected.
- The cooling curve should fit with the natural exponent curve; the choices are limited, and the point is not the equation but the act of curve fitting. If the curve fits seem universally terrible, try having the students select a data range and fit that portion. I had one trial in which the first data point was way off, and none of the curve fits were good. By highlighting all the data except that first point, the curve fit improved dramatically.