What's with All the Pressure?
Students measure eachother's blood pressureCopyright AZ Department of Health Services Director's Blog http://directorsblog.health.azdhs.gov/?tag=high-blood-pressure
Students learn how to take blood pressure by observing a teacher demonstration and then practicing on fellow classmates in small groups. Once the hands-on component of this activity is completed, the class brainstorms and discusses how blood pressure might affect a person's health. This activity acts as hook for the second lesson in this unit, in which blood pressure is presented in detail, as well as how variances in blood pressure can affect a person's cardiovascular system.
Engineers are very involved in designing and testing new materials, devices and processes to improve quality of life and prolong human life expectancy. For example, biomedical engineers design, develop and test artificial heart valves to replace faulty heart valves. To accomplish this, they must have a full understanding of how the human heart functions, how blood flows through the heart, and the stresses that this imparts on heart tissues.
After this activity, students should be able to:
- Describe the tools used to measure blood pressure.
- Measure a person's blood pressure using appropriate equipment.
- Describe how blood pressure is measured with a sphygmomanometer, which gives a reading of systolic over diastolic pressure in units of mmHG-millimeters of mercury.