Does Caffeine Affect The Heart Rate Aim: To investigate the effect of caffeine on the heart rate of Daphnia

(water fleas) Background knowledge: Plants produce caffeine as an insecticide. Cocoa in South America, Africa and Asia have been used as caffeine in drinks, such as coffee and tea. Caffeine is also used as a flavour enhancer to improve the taste of drinks such as soft drinks. In humans, caffeine acts as a stimulant which causes the stimulatory transmitters to be released. Too much consumption of caffeine can lead to restlessness, insomnia, anxiety, increase stress and high blood pressure. This can lead to heart and circulation problem. Daphnia is used in science to experiment the effect of substances on the heart rate of Daphnia. This is because; Daphnia have a see through (translucent) body which makes it easy to look through a microscope to study the rhythm of the heart beat. Hypothesis: I predict that the doses of caffeine in the blood stream will determine its heart rate. So, as the percentage of caffeine given to the daphnias blood stream increase, the heart rate will also increase. This is because the caffeine is a stimulant which affects the heart rate. Variables: Independent variable is the change in the amount of caffeine given to the daphnia. The dependent variable is the change in heart rate of the Daphnia as the different amount of caffeine is given. I will have to make sure it is a fair test to get the best reliable results. So I need to control the oxygen, temperature, the type of species of daphnia used, how long its exposed to the microscopic light, time measurement. By giving the same amount of atmosphere to all the daphnia used, I can make sure that these things dont affect the heart rate of the Daphnia but only the caffeine. Safety: 1) Make sure the solution is concentrated so the Daphnia doesnt get too much and die. 2) Make sure the glass wear does not break 3) The light can make the stage hot so remember to turn the light off when not being used Method/Procedure: 1) Collect all equipments 2) Place strands of cotton wool around the cavity slide to restrict the daphnias movement 3) Using a pipette, transfer a water flea on to a cavity slide. Remove excess water using a filter paper. 4) Using a microscope, record the heart beat of the daphnia every 2 minutes for a 10 minutes period. (Measure for 15 seconds and then times it by 4 to get the beats per minute) 5) Tap a pencil on a piece of paper for each heart beat and then count up the number of heart beat.

6) Repeat the procedure using other fleas (but the same species), on clean slides and adding one drop of caffeine solution, using a pipette. 7) Repeat the procedure using different concentration of caffeine. I have decided to use Daphnias in the experiment for the sake of science as it might help in the future. I am not testing it on animals, which will be harming a lot of useful animals and going against the ethical issue. The Daphnia is a small organism so it will not have a big impact on the population of the water fleas or cause many ethical issues. However, if everyone were to do this experiment, than the population of Daphnia will go down which in turn will cause disruption in the food chain and lead to deadly effects. So, I will add small doses of the dilute solution so the water fleas can withstand the caffeine and wont kill them, so we can put them back in their natural habitat. Measurements I will be measuring the Daphnias heart rate in Beats-Per-Minute (BPM). I will measure their heart rate every two minutes for a period of ten minutes. I will count their heart beat for 15 seconds than times it by four. This will give me the beats per minute. Measuring for ten minutes is enough for me to extract the information I need i.e. to see the change in heart beat from the normal BPM of a Daphnia. Validity/Accuracy To get an accurate result, I will use the smallest scale available as the water fleas would be small. Pipette would be used to add small amount of caffeine i.e. 0.1% to determine the smallest effects of caffeine on the daphnia. I will make my results trustworthy by recording the Daphnias heart beat every 2 minutes over 10 minutes. This will give me five results which will be enough to see the change in heart beat. Results: Beats Per Minute Coffee Concentration (%) 0 minutes 2 Minutes 4 Minutes 6 Minutes 8 Minutes 10 Minutes Average 0 72 160 276 204 300 340 225.3 0.1 114 118 168 200 164 192 159.3 0.3 226 300 248 304 352 328 293 0.4 137 61 70 63 45 40 69.3 0.5 153 204 400 126 160 Dead 173.8

Effect of caffeine on the Heart rate of Daphnia

400 300 200 100 0 1 0 2 0.1 3 0.3 4 225.3 159.3 69.3 0.4 5 0.5 173.8 293 Cofee Concentration (%) Average

Analysing: The graph shows that as the doses of caffeine increases, the heart rate also increase but then decrease again, then again increase. For example, the normal average heart rate is 225.3 at the start of the experiment. However, when the concentration of coffee increases to 0.1%, the average heart rate goes down to 159.3 BPM. After that, as the concentration of coffee increases to 0.3%, the average heart rate increase to 293 BPM. Therefore, the graph does not match up with my hypothesis. However, it does show that the heartbeat increases dramatically when o.3% of caffeine is given to a water flea. This is because; the caffeine affected the heart rate, by increasing its movement of blood around its body hence increasing its heart beat. In the last concentration of 0.5%, the Daphnia dies by the end of ten minutes. The blood pressure and the heart rate increases so much, that it kills the daphnia as it could not withstand such high dose of caffeine in its body. Evaluation: I didnt get the results that I expected; due to the short amount of time given to us, so we werent able to redo the experiments when anomalous results were spotted. Additionally, when the caffeine was added, the heart beat was so fast that, it was difficult to count the number of heart beats, which could be another reason why the results of the experiment didnt turn out well. Moreover, different people counted the different concentration affecting the heart beat of the daphnia. So the measurement could have been counted wrongly by the different people who tested each solution. When adding the different solutions of caffeine, we may have added more or less % of caffeine to the different daphnias that we used. Each daphnia may have different average heart rate than we think which couldve also affected the result. It could also be that we were taking down clumsy results as we werent bothered to take accurate results for the last few heart beats. Another case is that the rooms temperature might have changed in different times so this is a fault because we know that temperature can affect the heart rate. Therefore, a definite conclusion cannot be made because the experiment needs to be done again. But this time, the surrounding needs to be controlled so it doesnt affect the Daphnias heart rate, only the caffeine does the changing to the heart rate. To improve the investigation, a scientific lab, where the atmosphere can be controlled, should be used. Instead of using a pencil and paper to count the number of heart rate, some kind of machine should be used where it will automatically detect the beat of the heart rate and so count it. This would be more reliable than a person doing the counting, as human counting is slower than a machines.