Reflex lab

What is reflex?
         It is the automatic response of a muscle to a stimulus.
What is the patellar reflex?
     This is the results from tapping the patellar tendon with a reflex hammer. This is below the knee.
It then stretches the muscle activates nerve impulses which then travel to the spinal cord.

We had in experiment where we use an EKG sensor to compare the speed of a voluntary vs. a reflex muscle action. And also to measure the relative strength of the impulse generated by a stimulus with and without reinforcement.

What we used:
Computer                               Logger Pro
Electrode Tabs                         Cable Tie, 10 cm long
Vernier Computer Interface             Cloth Tape Measure
Reflex Hammer                          Pen
Vernier EKG Sensor                     Vernier 25-g Accelerometer

Here is what we did:
 We connect the EKG Sensor and the Accelerometer to the Vernier computer interface
 After we open the file "14A Reflexes with ACC"
 Connect the Accelerometer to the Reflex Hammer
 Then Shelby (test subject) sat on the chair where she had enough room to move her foot freely
 We then attack two electrode tabs above her knee along the line of the quadriceps muscle which is between the knee and the hip.  Then we place a third electrode tan on the lower leg. After this we attach the red and green leads the electrode and a black one to the lower electrode. We then started to collect data as you can see below.  
 

In the graphs below the red shows the reflexes time and the blue shows the acceleration.

Here is the the data when she was somewhat resting.

Here is before hitting the knee. This is when she would close her eyes and use sound to kick her leg.

Here is when  we would hit the knee to test the reflex of it with the hammer.

And this is when we were hitting the knee fast with the reflex hammer.