Dive
Scuba Diving Science Fair Project
By OceanFirst on 2/12/19
In late 2018, we were approached by a young TIDES student, Grace, who was inspired to develop a science fair project about scuba diving. She wanted to know what effect scuba diving had on vital signs.
With the help of her test subjects, Ellie, Elijah, and Jackson, she set out to collect data on their vital signs before and after a dive. She hopes that her findings could help mitigate the deadly risks that panicked divers face by providing a way to stop a panic attack before it starts.
Here is Grace's summary of her experiment:
For my science fair project, I looked for the effect SCUBA diving had on vital signs. To do this I collected my participant's vitals then had them scuba dive for 15 minutes at 12 ft four times. After each dive, I would collect their vital signs and see how they changed from dive to dive.
I wanted to do this because in America alone 100 panicked divers each year die. Since vital signs change before panic attacks I thought knowing the normal vitals after scuba diving we would one day be able to monitor vital signs underwater and be able to tell when a panic attack is about to happen based on any change in vital signs. If we could do this we would be able to stop a panic attack before it becomes a problem.
After I conducted my experiment I found that blood pressure increased, our temperature also increased, our respiratory and heart rate peaked at our 2nd dive but then went back to normal at our 3rd and 4th. I hope this can help in the future to prevent deaths from panicked divers.
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