Week 1 — Reading a Feedback Loop: The Clinic Chart Report — Traditional alternative (no AI)

Instructors: publish this instead of the adaptive version if you prefer, and unpublish or delete the adaptive one.

Assignment 1 of the term — read a body-temperature feedback loop from its numbers to its parts, and explain it to someone new to anatomy and physiology.

This week you learned that the body holds itself steady with feedback loops and that every loop runs receptor, then control center, then effector. In this assignment you work four short problems on one small clinic chart, interpret each one, and explain the loop to someone who has never studied anatomy and physiology. This week's lecture tutorial, quiz, discussion, and A&P Lab & Inquiry practise the same ideas from other angles.

The task

The body-temperature loop is an illustrative dataset constructed for this course (not real clinical data). One clinic chart shows three readings: 36.0 °C, 37.0 °C, and 38.5 °C. The set point is 37.0 °C, and the chart reads every value against a model band of 36.5 to 37.5 °C.

Work these four problems, showing your subtraction and the unit each time:

1. On the illustrative clinic chart the set point is 37.0 °C and the low reading is 36.0 °C. How many degrees Celsius below the set point is the low reading?
2. On the same chart the high reading is 38.5 °C and the set point is 37.0 °C. How many degrees Celsius above the set point is the high reading?
3. The chart's model band runs from 36.5 °C to 37.5 °C. How many degrees Celsius wide is the band from its lower edge to its upper edge?
4. The band's lower edge is 36.5 °C and the low reading is 36.0 °C. How many degrees Celsius below the lower edge of the band is the low reading?

Beside each answer, add one brief interpretation:

• Problem 1: name the receptor, the control center, and at least one effector for the low reading, and explain why the response makes this negative feedback.
• Problem 2: name the two effectors that answer the high reading and say how each one sheds heat.
• Problem 3: explain the difference between a set point and a normal range, and why this band is a teaching model rather than a norm for any one person.
• Problem 4: name one example of positive feedback from this week and explain why the temperature loop is not one.

Explain it to a non-expert

A younger relative asks you, "Why do I shiver when I'm cold, and sweat when I'm hot?" Write a 3–5 sentence message that explains the loop in everyday words: what senses the change, what compares it, and what pushes back. Name one limit of the explanation, such as that the thermostat picture is a classroom model and the body often uses several effectors at once. Describe what bodies do; do not give health advice. More than one good answer is possible.

For a different, ungraded example, imagine explaining a car's cruise control to a friend. Model answer: "The car keeps checking its own speed. A small computer compares that speed with the number you picked. If the car slows on a hill, the computer gives it more gas until it is back at your number. It is a simple picture: a real car also has to deal with brakes, wind, and traffic, which this explanation leaves out."

Use that pattern for the body-temperature loop, with your own wording and evidence.

Show your subtraction. A reader should be able to rebuild every gap you report from the readings, the set point, and the band edges without guessing which values you used.

Deliverables

Submit a single report containing:

• the four answers, each with the subtraction and unit shown and the brief interpretation the task names for that problem;
• your message to your younger relative, explaining what senses the change, what compares it, and what pushes back, with one named limit; and
• a one-line restatement of the three readings, the set point, and the band edges you used, so your results can be checked.

Keep it to roughly one page. Clear and correct beats long.

Choose how you show it. Present your report as written text, or as a recorded audio or video explanation of about three minutes with a transcript, or as a labelled sketch of the chart with the band and the three readings plus a short note. Every form is graded by the same scoring criteria. Submit in any accessible file type or as a link; a recorded response may be submitted as audio or video with a transcript, or as text.

How you'll be graded

The full analytic rubric is attached to this assignment in Canvas.

Academic integrity and AI use

This version is designed to be completed without AI: do the subtractions, the interpretations, and the writing yourself, without any AI tool. You may use a calculator or a spreadsheet for the arithmetic. Submitting AI-generated work as your own, or copying another student's work, is an integrity violation under the course policy.

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