Homeostasis Lab

Our homeostasis lab didn't go exactly to planned every second but we learned form those mistakes and corrected them. Our experiment to test homeostasis was to see how long it would take each of our bodies to return to their normal temperatures after being cooled and then after being heated.  We used two girls and two boys to compare.  First we recorded the normal temperature of our bodies.  We then placed our hands in ice water and kept them there for one minute. We then timed ourselves to see how long it would take for our hands to return to their original temperatures. We then repeated the experiment but used hot water instead. For some of us it took ages to return to our normal temperatures and for others it only took a few minutes. Over all it seemed the boys' homeostasis worked much faster than the girls'.

This experiment only tested a portion of our bodies.  This would be quite a bit different if it were the entire body.  In fact, my own Mother experienced hypothermia during a river rafting trip.  My mother used to run rivers constantly.  One of her many trips though went very wrong.  The group had just started out when my mother was bumped out of the boat into the extremely cold choppy waters.  Just before the trip the group had been told that people don't die from inhaling too much water but drinking too much.  As my mom was swept down the river she was continuously dunked under the water and unintentionally gulped down the frigid water.  She was not only drowning to some extant, but freezing herself inside and out.  She rode down the river following the raft for nearly four miles.  The team managed to pull the raft onto a bank and fling her a rope to pull her to shore.  Once on shore she could hardly breath much less move.  At first she was just numb and somewhat delirious.  Once she had sat in the sun for a few moments she transitioned into uncontrollable shaking.  Though the shaking had begun to relax, her hands and feet still didn't have full dexterity and her color hadn't changed from the purply blue.

My mother of course became numb because any heat had been drained from her body, everything froze up, including her brain.  When she began shaking, it was her body's response to the cold; it was making an attempt to warm itself up-homeostasis.  Her hands and feet were the last to return to normal because the core of the body will warm fastest and spread outward.  My mom believes it took her about forty-five minutes to return to a fairly normal temperature and over an hour to return to a totally normal temperature.  And this was after changing into dry clothes and sitting in the sun directly after getting out of the water.

My mother's experience was basically a large scale version of our experiment.  I think hearing this real life story helped me not only understand homeostasis but also the real danger you can put your body into in extreme heat-hypothermia and extreme cold-hypothermia plus the possibilities of long term effects.