Math and Science Activities

Math and Science Activities

in the

Context of

Baseball

from the

Event-Based Science® Institute

Student Version - Biology

The secret to real learning—learning that lasts—is total engagement. When students are fully engaged in their work—working in a real-world context, using vocabulary, skills, and concepts familiar to experts in the field—learning happens naturally. When students are truly absorbed in meaningful work, memorization, drill and practice, and worksheets become unnecessary.

The trick is not just to engage students in the first place, that is the easy part. The trick is to keep students engaged.

The activities in this module are designed for use in middle school science and mathematics classrooms. They use baseball as their real-world context. The stories that you find in the Background section of each activity are true. They tell about real things that happen to real baseball and softball players. From the context of the story flows a challenging task that requires students to design and conduct an experiment or use a mathematics concept.

This strategy is called Total Engagement Learning.

Placing a learning activity in the context of something real gives students an authentic reason to learn. An authentic activity works too. It engage students for three reasons:

CONTEXT—A real-world context makes learning meaningful.

PURPOSE— An authentic activity gives students a reason to learn and use concepts and skills.

DIFFERENTIATION— Authentic activities demonstrate how people with different skills, interests and jobs can all use and apply the things we are learning in school. In the classroom this means role-playing, and role-playing means natural differentiation.

Activities are also accompanied by readings. These readings come in two forms:

Fundamentals - a brief discussion of the concepts (science or mathematics) dealt with in the activity. The Teachers Version will tell you how many copies you will need to make.

Skills - a brief discussion of techniques and skills needed to conduct the experiment. The Teachers Version will tell you how many copies you will need to make.

Some activities are also provided with resources. Resources are charts and tables that contain additional information for students to use as they complete the activities.

In a few cases, forms also accompany the activities.

The Event-Based Science Institute, with a generous grant from the Cal Ripken, Sr. Foundation, created the activities contained herein. They are intended for the use of science and mathematics teachers in both public and private schools. Any opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this publication are those of the Event-Based Science Institute, Inc. and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Cal Ripken, Sr. Foundation.

This publication was supported by grant number 2003-DR-FX-0024 from the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP).The opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this publication are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of OJJDP or the U.S. Department of Justice.

Copyright © 2004 Event-Based Science Institute, Inc. However, these online activities were designed to be used with appropriate duplicating equipment to reproduce copies for use with students. Permission is hereby granted to teachers for that purpose. For all other purposes, you may request permission in writing from the Event-Based Science Institute, Inc., 6609 Paxton Road, Rockville, MD 20852.

Event-Based Science® is the registered trademark of the Event-Based Science Institute, Inc.

Heart Rate

Student Version

Purpose

To set a standard for heart-rate-recovery-after-exercise to be used by Babe Ruth League baseball and softball teams as they screen players for heart problems.

Materials

Fundamentals - What is a pulse?
Skills - Proposed Babe-Ruth-League Heart Test
Sports Illustrated Article
stopwatch or clock with a sweep secondhand
3" x 5" card

Background

Darryl Kile was scheduled to pitch against the Chicago Cubs on Sunday evening. But late Friday or early Saturday morning he died!

Darryl Kile was an athlete. He was an All-Star pitcher for the St. Louis Cardinals. He was not supposed to die of a heart attack. But at the young age of 33, fatty deposits had already blocked the coronary arteries in his heart.

It is rare for someone as young as Darryl Kile to have a heart attack; but heart disease is increasing among Americans as young as 15.

But if heart problems are caught early, a better diet and aerobic-exercise program can help.

You are on a special committee for the Babe Ruth League. Your committee has developed a test that will be given to all young people who are trying out for a baseball or softball team. The test involves jogging in place for two minutes.

Courtesy Maryland Heart Transplant Center

Courtesy USA Today

The only thing left to do is to set the standard for heart-rate-recovery-after-exercise. In other words, the League needs a cut-off number so that kids whose hearts are too weak can be identified.

Procedure

Read Fundamentals - What is a pulse?, and Skills - Proposed Babe-Ruth-League Heart Test. Work together with a class of middle school students to determine how quickly heart rates return to normal after moderate exercise.

Determine the average time for heart rates to return to normal after exercise. Then, decide where to set the cut-off.

Conclusion

Officials from the Babe Ruth League want to know the average time that it takes for heart rates to return to normal after exercise and the cut-off number that you have selected. Be sure to explain why you have selected that particular cut-off number.

Prepare a postcard addressed to the Babe Ruth League:

Ronald Tellefsen, President/CEO
Babe Ruth League, Inc.
Camden Station
Howard St. at Camden St.
Baltimore, MD

Include your return address in the upper left-hand corner. In the body of the postcard, state:

average resting heart rate ______

average exercise heart rate ______

average return to normal time ______min

recommended cut-off time ______min

Heart Rate

FUNDAMENTALS

What is a Pulse?

A heartbeat has two parts. They are sometimes called lubb and dubb because those are the sounds that a doctor hears. A lubb happens when the upper chambers of the heart contract to squeeze the blood downward into the ventricles. A dubb happens when the lower chambers contract.

Every time the lower chambers of the heart contract, the blood in the left ventricle rushes upward into the aorta. It quickly speeds away from the heart causing the aorta to expand as it passes. As the blood races along, some of it pushes into the first artery that branches off from the aorta. Some of the blood enters the next artery.

The blood from each contraction of the heart produces a bulge in the artery. We call that bulge a pulse. One pulse equals one heartbeat.

The pulse can be felt anywhere an artery passes close to the skin. Common places to feel a pulse include the wrist, neck, temple, behind the knees, and on top of the foot.

To feel the pulse in the wrist, place your index and middle finger over the underside of your opposite wrist, below the base of the thumb. Press firmly with flat fingers until you feel the pulse.

To feel the pulse on the neck, place your index and middle finger just to the side of your Adam's apple, in the soft hollow area. Press firmly until a pulse is felt. Once you find your pulse, count the beats for 1 full minute.

You can get an approximate pulse by counting for 30 seconds and multiplying by 2, or by counting for 15 seconds and multiplying by 4. The easiest approximation comes from counting for 6 seconds then adding a zero.

The bad thing about approximations is that they become less and less accurate as you count for shorter and shorter times. But in the test you are doing, the pulse may be changing rapidly. When the pulse is changing rapidly, the shortest count may be the most accurate.

If a resting heart rate is what you want, you must have been resting for at least 10 minutes. The exercise heart rate is obtained while you are exercising, or for the 6 seconds immediately after you stop.

Why do doctors take your pulse?

Your pulse can give your doctor important information about your health. If your heart rate is normal, that doesn't say very much, but if it is not normal you may have a problem.

A fast resting pulse can mean that you are dehydrated or have an infection. A slow resting pulse can mean that your heart is very strong and healthy. How quickly your heart rate returns to normal after exercise gives information about your fitness.

Heart Rate

SKILLS

Proposed Babe-Ruth League Heart Test

This test is to be given to all young people who are trying out for Babe Ruth League baseball and softball teams.

Directions

Sit quietly for 10 minutes. Then, count the number of times your heartbeats in 15 seconds. This is your resting heart rate. Record it in the data table.
Exercise for exactly two minutes by following your teacher's instructions.
Immediately upon stopping, count the number of heartbeats for 15 seconds and multiply it by 4. Record the value in the data table.
Take your pulse every minute until it returns to your resting rate. Each time you will count for 15 seconds and begin counting exactly one minute after the previous count began. Remember to multiply each count by 4.
When your heart rate has recovered—it is back to your resting rate—record how many minutes it took.
Work together with the class to compile the data and determine medians for each reading.

Heart Rate

Reaction Time

Student Version

Purpose

To investigate actions that a batter can take to improve reaction time.

Materials

Fundamentals - Split Second Reactions
Skills - Testing Your Reaction Time
Centimeter Ruler (1 per group of 3 people)
Resource - Reaction-Time Chart (1 per group)
one 5 x 8 index card for each person

Background

One of the top high school pitchers in the nation is Roswell High School's Jimmy Barthmaier. His fastball has been clocked at 96 miles per hour. He is sure to be drafted to play major league baseball.

Batters in the major leagues do not need another good fastball pitcher! When a pitcher throws a baseball at 95 miles per hour, it takes the ball only four-tenths of a second to reach home plate. That gives the batter about two-tenths of a second to decide to swing or not to swing.

Can you react that fast? Many people cannot.

Is there a strategy for improving your reaction time?

As batting coach for the Detroit Tigers you want to find one or two ways to improve your batters' reaction times. Your team needs any help it can get.

Procedure

Read Split Second Reactions to find out which variables you can test. Work with two partners to think of some strategies that might improve a person's reaction time. Read Testing Your Reaction Time and use the experiment described there to test the strategies.

Atlanta Journal Constitution

Conclusion

Your team's advertising manager needs your results. If you find any strategies that work in the ruler drop experiment, prepare a strategy card to put in a cereal box that lists what batters should do to improve their reaction time. Be sure to include evidence for the effectiveness of your strategy. Also tell what reaction time is and tell which parts of the nervous system are working together during the act of batting. The card should use proper grammar, be attractively designed, and contain diagrams to help the reader understand points being made.

If you do not find any strategies that work, write a short report that lists the strategies tested, and the results that prove they did not work. Also tell what reaction time is and tell which parts of the nervous system are working together during the act of batting. The report should use proper grammar, be attractive, and contain diagrams to help the reader understand points being made.

Heart Rate

Fundamentals

Split Second Reactions

A major league pitcher can throw a baseball 95 miles per hour—some throw faster than that.

At 95 miles per hour it takes about four-tenths of a second for the ball to travel the 60-and-1/2 feet from the pitcher's mound to home plate.

What does a batter do during the less-than-half second that it takes the ball to reach the plate?

By the time the ball has traveled just 12 feet from the pitcher's mound, the batter's eyes have seen the ball, and the batter's brain has analyzed its speed and other characteristics, then calculated whether the pitch is a fastball, curveball, slider, knuckleball, screwball, or whatever. And all of this happens automatically

Walter Johnson[*] (1887-1946)

Charley Metro: "The good hitters get their tip-off from the pitchers. And there are many, many ways that a pitcher tips off his pitches. He grips it like that [fingers straight over top of ball]; there's your fastball. When he throws a curveball, he chokes the ball [wedges it between his thumb and forefinger, gripping it on the side so it sticks out]. Now see how much white of the ball shows on a fastball? And how much more white shows on a curveball? . . .

"Another thing is when they bring the ball into the glove, when they come in with a flat wrist like that, that'll be a fastball. When they turn their wrist like that, it's a breaking pitch. There are many, many ways, and the good hitters pick out these things . . . facial expressions . . . human habits and characteristics will tell."

During the middle portion of the baseball's flight, the batter must time the ball and decide where to swing. If the batter decides to swing, the batter must start the bat moving when the ball is about 25 to 30 feet in front of the plate. The ball will arrive at the plate about 250 thousandths of a second later—about the limit of human reaction time. The bat must make contact with the ball within an even smaller time range: A few-thousandths-of-a-second error in timing will result in a strike or a foul ball. Position is important, too. Hitting the ball a few millimeters too high means a grounder. Hitting it a few millimeters too low causes a popup.

Exactly how humans are able to estimate the expected position of a quickly moving ball is unknown. Obviously, this remarkable skill is learned through long practice. Eye-brain-body coordination is acquired only by going through the motions over and over; even so, the batter misses most of the time. Getting a hit three times out of ten at bats is considered an excellent average. It's interesting that George Schaller and other behavioral scientists have observed that lions and cheetahs are also successful only about a third of the time in capturing their prey.

Based on Biological Baseball by Charles Carlson,

Heart Rate

Skills

Testing Your Reaction Time

Measuring very short intervals of time is hard to do. It takes expensive equipment that we do not have. But for this activity we need a way to measure your reaction time.

There is a way to do it without using a stopwatch. We can estimate reaction time by measuring the distance a ruler falls then converting distance into a very accurate estimate of the time the ruler was falling.

To conduct this experiment you need a three-person team with each person playing a different role.

Role:

Pitcher: The person who drops the ruler.

Batter: The person who catches the ruler.

Coach: The person who watches the batter, gives the batter strategies to improve reaction time, and records data on a data table.

Heart Rate