Setup: 15-30 minutes
Performactivities: 45-120 minutes
Analysis: 30 minutes
Grouppresentations: 30 minutes
Extensionwith different exercises: 45-120 minutes

OBJECTIVES

Students work in teams to:

• Measure oxygen percentages in room air and air exhaled after students perform various activities.
  
• Explain what the measurements indicate about the body's ability to replace oxygen as activity levels increase.

NOTE: See the calculator-based lab appendices for the Texas Instruments TI-83 Plus calculator and the CBL2™. Refer to user manuals if using other models of calculators and interfaces.

TECHNOLOGY EDUCATION: Apply design processes (model a solution; test, evaluate, and refine the design; reevaluate the final solution).
MATHEMATICS: Apply appropriate techniques, tools, and formulas to determine measurements. Analyze change in various contexts.
SCIENCE: Students work in pairs to design and perform experiments to investigate the effects of activity on oxygen levels, demonstrating knowledge of interrelationships between humans and plants, photosynthesis and respiration, and oxygen and carbon dioxide levels (interdependence of organisms). Students use the scientific instruments, calculators, interfaces, and sensors to perform laboratory measurements (understandings of and abilities necessary to do scientific inquiry).

• Download and introduce students to the Plant Production Simulator Challenge, "Living off the Land-Which Plants are Most Productive?"
• Assign students timetables for working in pairs on the lab or simulator activity.
• Adapt the rubric provided to match your desired student learning processes and outcomes for this activity. Disseminate and discuss the grading criteria with students, including points for teamwork, cooperation, and time on task.

• International Space Station Challenge activity, Calculating Human Requirements.
• BioBLAST Plant Production Simulator Program and Plant Production Simulator Challenge,"Living off the Land-Which Plants are Most Productive?" (http://www2.cet.edu/iss/activities/PPSim/PPSim.html).
• NASA Advanced Life Support (ALS) web site (http://advlifesupport.jsc.nasa.gov/). See especially the Lunar-Mars Life Support Test Project "LMLSTP," which includes chamber tests at Johnson Space Center and the "ALS Sites" link.
• BioBLAST Human Requirements Labs, Measuring Respiratory Profiles and Effects of Exercise on Respiration and Pulse Rates (http://www.cotf.edu/BioBLAST).

Use the rubric enclosed, or use one you have designed with your students.