Balloons & Breathing

Last week Miss Clark taught us all about the respiratory system and how we breathe.

We take the air through our mouth and nose and down our windpipe. The air travels through our windpipe and into our lungs. After it goes into your lungs some of the oxygen goes into our blood and our blood moves it around our body.

We decided that we wanted to find out how much air we each breathe. We blew up a balloon in 8 seconds and then we tied it up and put them behind Miss W's desk. That first balloon was how much air we had to start with.

After that we ran to the end of the field and back, then we blew up another balloon for eight seconds and we tied that up. We needed to do it at the same time, but we ended up in two groups! One straight away and then the other group ended up waiting. Then we had to measure both balloons.

We realised that most of the balloons after our run were bigger than the balloons before our run. Dylan said that this was because after our run we are puffing more than we normally do. Angel-Mey said that the balloons were bigger after our run because we took in more air than before. Bridie said that we discovered that when you blow calmly, you're putting some air into the balloon but when you're puffed you're putting extra air in.

A few of us found out that our second balloons were smaller than our first one and we thought that would be the case. We thought that our second balloon would be smaller because we would have less energy and less air to spare!

Miss Clark made a graph to show us how big our balloons were before and after.

What are you doing for science this term? Do you know another way to measure air? Do you think this was a fair test? Why or why not?