Summary: The Douglas Bag
During exercise the demand for oxygen increases as the respiring cells require more oxygen to meet the increased demand for energy, there’s also an increased removal of carbon dioxide, (Burton, Stokes, & Hall, 2004). Carbon dioxide is a by-product of aerobic respiration (as well as water and heat). In this experiment Douglas bags were used to collect expired gas to be used for analytical purposes. Douglas bags enable readings of both carbon dioxide and oxygen to be taken with the use of a Servomex Analyser, as well as total gas content using a dry gas meter and pump. The analysis of these results can be used to determine the gross efficiency of an athlete, Douglas bags are used as a gold-standard approach due to their high reliability (Gregson
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It will increase relatively to the participant’s efficiency. An athlete with higher efficiency will have lower carbon dioxide levels compared to an athlete with lower efficiency.
Materials
This experiment needed various specialist pieces of equipment, without these you cannot perform this experiment. Firstly a cycle ergometer, a Douglas bag, on top of the Douglas bag there was a one way valve, the Douglas bag also had a stop cock which stopped air from escaping when the participant wasn’t cycling, a tube was used to connect the mouth piece to the Douglas bag, a sterile mouth piece, a nose clip, a Servomex Analyser, a dry gas measure, a pump (for the dry gas meter), a barometer, weighing scales, a tape measure. …show more content…
The tempo the participant had to maintain was 60 revolutions per minute (rpm). Females needed to cycle at 60 watts for the first stage and 120 watts for the second stage, males however had to cycle at 90 watts and 180 watts respectively. To ensure the correct watts were being produced the watts were divided by the rpm, the result of the calculation gave you the weight that was needed to produce the desired watts. Note that the basket of the ergometer weighs 1 kilogram, ergo this value must be subtracted from the result of the equation. For example: 60watts/60rpm = 1, in this case no weight was added to the ergometer because there’s already one kilogram present because of the
It will increase relatively to the participant’s efficiency. An athlete with higher efficiency will have lower carbon dioxide levels compared to an athlete with lower efficiency.
Materials
This experiment needed various specialist pieces of equipment, without these you cannot perform this experiment. Firstly a cycle ergometer, a Douglas bag, on top of the Douglas bag there was a one way valve, the Douglas bag also had a stop cock which stopped air from escaping when the participant wasn’t cycling, a tube was used to connect the mouth piece to the Douglas bag, a sterile mouth piece, a nose clip, a Servomex Analyser, a dry gas measure, a pump (for the dry gas meter), a barometer, weighing scales, a tape measure. …show more content…
The tempo the participant had to maintain was 60 revolutions per minute (rpm). Females needed to cycle at 60 watts for the first stage and 120 watts for the second stage, males however had to cycle at 90 watts and 180 watts respectively. To ensure the correct watts were being produced the watts were divided by the rpm, the result of the calculation gave you the weight that was needed to produce the desired watts. Note that the basket of the ergometer weighs 1 kilogram, ergo this value must be subtracted from the result of the equation. For example: 60watts/60rpm = 1, in this case no weight was added to the ergometer because there’s already one kilogram present because of the