Week 14 — Two Pedals, One Heart: A Heart-Rate Report — Traditional alternative (no AI)

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

Assignment 13 of the term — average the heart-rate table, find the rise, name the branch behind each move, count the spinal nerves, and explain to someone new why a pounding heart takes a while to settle.

This week you learned that the peripheral nervous system is the ganglia and nerves outside the brain and spinal cord, how to sort signals as afferent or efferent and commands as somatic or autonomic, and how the sympathetic and parasympathetic branches push the heart in opposite directions. Week 1 gave you the feedback loop and its effector, and Week 13 mapped the brain and spinal cord, including the brainstem's control of the heart; this week the nerves carry those commands out, and two branches push the heart in opposite directions. In this assignment you work four short heart-rate-and-count problems, interpret each one, and explain the two branches 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

This week's shared dataset is Dataset K, the heart-rate table. Its numbers are illustrative: engineered by the course's discipline pack to land on clean values, not measured data. Three counts were taken at rest (60, 64, and 62 beats per minute), three right after activity (96, 100, and 98), and three one minute after stopping (70, 74, and 72). Each average is the table's own value, never a norm. Beside it sits Dataset L, the nerve counts: 12 pairs of cranial nerves and 31 pairs of spinal nerves.

Work these four problems, showing your arithmetic and the unit with every number:

1. In Dataset K, the three resting heart-rate counts are 60, 64, and 62 beats per minute. Add them: what is the resting total, in beats per minute?
2. In Dataset K, the three counts right after activity add to 294 beats per minute. Divide by the 3 trials: what is the after-activity average, in beats per minute?
3. In Dataset K, the after-activity average is 98 beats per minute and the resting average is 62 beats per minute. Subtract: what is the rise, in beats per minute?
4. The spinal nerves split into 8 cervical, 12 thoracic, 5 lumbar, 5 sacral, and 1 coccygeal pairs. Add them: how many pairs of spinal nerves are there?

Beside each answer, add one brief interpretation:

• Problem 1: explain why the lab takes three counts and averages them instead of trusting one, and name the branch that holds the resting rate below the pacemaker's own pace of roughly 100 beats per minute.
• Problem 2: name the branch that drove the rate up, and give two of its features: where its neurons leave the spinal cord, its chemical messenger at most targets, or one more of its effects.
• Problem 3: explain what dual innervation means for the heart, and say which branch, through which nerve, brings the rate back down after activity.
• Problem 4: say why every spinal nerve is called a mixed nerve, and give one afferent signal and one efferent command a spinal nerve could carry.

Explain it to a non-expert

A neighbor asks, "Why does my heart keep pounding for a while after I climb the stairs, even once I've stopped?" Write a 3–5 sentence message that explains, in everyday words, that two automatic branches of the nervous system push the heart in opposite directions, that one sped it up for the climb, and that the other slows it back down through a nerve called the vagus, which takes some time. Name one limit, for example that Dataset K's numbers are illustrative and every person's own counts differ, or that this message describes how the body works and is not health advice. Put any technical term in everyday words. More than one good message is possible.

For a different, ungraded example, imagine a friend who asks why the stomach seems to stop working right before giving a speech. Model answer: "Your body has an automatic 'get ready' system that switches on when something feels like a challenge. Part of its job is to put digestion on pause so the body can focus on acting. When the moment passes, a second automatic system takes over and gets digestion running again. This is a simplified classroom picture of two branches of the nervous system, and it is not medical advice."

Use that pattern for the message to your neighbor, with your own wording and evidence.

Show your arithmetic. A reader should be able to rebuild every result you report from the numbers given, without guessing which numbers you used or which operation you chose.

Deliverables

Submit a single report containing:

• the four answers, each with the arithmetic and units shown and the brief interpretation the task names for that problem;
• your message to your neighbor, explaining the two branches, the vagus nerve slowing the heart back down, and one limit; and
• a one-line restatement of the numbers you used, so your results are reproducible.

Keep it to roughly one page.

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 labeled sketch of the heart between its two branches with the vagus nerve and the sympathetic fibers marked and 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 calculations, the interpretations, and the writing yourself, without a chatbot or other 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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