APK2105L: Human Physiology Laboratory

Course Description

APK2105L Human Physiology Laboratory is the hands-on half of the second semester of anatomy and physiology — where the regulatory systems described in lecture are measured rather than read about, on real bodies producing real numbers.

The statewide inventory records the course at Florida Polytechnic University and the University of West Florida. ⚠ Only UWF's catalog entry was retrievable, so this is a single-source guide — but the subject is among the most standardised in American higher education.

UWF titles it Applied Human Anatomy and Physiology II Laboratory, places it in the College of Health, Department of Movement Sciences and Health at 1 semester hour, and lists its content directly: "Lab associated with lecture course. Exercises parallel topics presented in the lecture series: nervous system and nervous tissue, somatic NS, cardiovascular system, circulation, respiratory physiology, digestion, absorption, metabolism, and urinary physiology." ⚠ Prerequisite: APK 2100C OR BSC 1085/L OR APK 2100/L. Co-requisite: APK 2105.

⚠ What makes this laboratory different from the first semester's, and it is a genuine shift. The anatomy laboratory is about identification — finding and naming structures. This one is about measurement. You will take blood pressures, record electrocardiograms, run spirometry, measure reaction times and reflexes, and analyse urine and blood samples — and the object of study is frequently yourself and your classmates. ⚠ Students who enjoyed the first semester's memorisation sometimes find this one harder, and students who struggled with it sometimes find this one much easier.

The system-by-system content, following UWF's list. Nervous tissue and the nervous system — histology, reflex arcs, reaction time, sensory testing. The somatic nervous system — reflexes and their clinical meaning. Cardiovascular — heart sounds, ⚠ blood pressure by auscultation, which is a manual skill that takes practice and is genuinely useful for the rest of your life, the electrocardiogram and its components, and the response of both to exercise and position. Circulation — pulse, peripheral perfusion, and the effects of posture. Respiratory physiology — spirometry, lung volumes and capacities, and ventilation's response to exercise and to breath-holding. Digestion and absorption — enzyme activity experiments, which ⚠ are the clearest demonstration of how temperature and pH govern biological reactions. Metabolism. Urinary physiology — urinalysis and the interpretation of what appears in it.

⚠⚠ And the lesson that runs through all of it, which is the laboratory's real contribution: physiological measurements vary. Between people, within one person across a day, and between two consecutive readings. Understanding what counts as a meaningful difference — rather than treating any number as a fact — is a skill this laboratory teaches better than any lecture can, and it transfers directly to clinical practice.

Learning Outcomes

Required Outcomes

• Identify nervous tissue microscopically and the structures of the nervous system on models.
• Demonstrate and interpret somatic reflexes, and explain the reflex arc.
• Perform sensory and motor testing and interpret the results.
• Measure reaction time and explain the factors affecting it.
• ⚠ Measure blood pressure by auscultation accurately and identify sources of error.
• Identify heart sounds and relate them to the cardiac cycle.
• Record and interpret an electrocardiogram, identifying its components and relating them to cardiac events.
• Measure cardiovascular responses to exercise and posture and explain the mechanisms.
• Identify blood cells microscopically and explain a differential count.
• Perform and interpret spirometry, and calculate lung volumes and capacities.
• Explain respiratory responses to exercise, breath-holding and altered carbon dioxide.
• Conduct enzyme activity experiments and explain the effects of temperature, pH and substrate concentration.
• Perform and interpret a urinalysis, and explain the physiological meaning of abnormal findings.
• Identify the histology of the major organ systems covered.
• ⚠ Explain physiological variability and distinguish a meaningful change from normal fluctuation.
• Use data acquisition systems and laboratory instrumentation competently.
• Collect, record and graph physiological data, and analyse it appropriately.
• Write a laboratory report with method, results, interpretation and sources of error.
• Follow laboratory safety and bloodborne pathogen procedures.
• Relate laboratory findings to lecture concepts and to clinical presentation.

Optional Outcomes

• Perform blood typing and explain the immunological basis.
• Measure metabolic rate or estimate energy expenditure.
• Use virtual physiology software such as PhysioEx.
• Perform hearing and vision testing.
• Explain clinical laboratory values and reference ranges.
• Design a simple physiological experiment with a control.
• Relate findings to pathophysiology.

Major Topics

Required Topics

• Nervous tissue and nervous system structures.
• Reflexes and the somatic nervous system.
• Sensory physiology and reaction time.
• Blood — cells, typing, haematocrit.
• Heart sounds and the cardiac cycle.
• Blood pressure measurement.
• Electrocardiography.
• Cardiovascular responses to exercise and posture.
• Respiratory mechanics and spirometry.
• Control of ventilation.
• Digestive enzymes and absorption.
• Metabolism.
• Urinalysis and renal physiology.
• Histology of the systems covered.
• Data collection, graphing and variability.
• Laboratory safety and bloodborne pathogens.

Optional Topics

• Blood typing.
• Metabolic rate measurement.
• Virtual physiology.
• Special senses testing.
• Clinical laboratory interpretation.
• Experimental design.

Resources & Tools

• Laboratory manuals: Marieb, Human Anatomy & Physiology Laboratory Manual — ⚠ the most widely used; check which version and edition your section requires; Allen and Harper.
• ⚠⚠ Free and sufficient as the accompanying text: OpenStax Anatomy and Physiology. Also free and unusually good for this half: Ninja Nerd's cardiovascular and renal videos, and Khan Academy's health and medicine unit.
• Instrumentation you will use: sphygmomanometers and stethoscopes, spirometers, ECG electrodes and recorders, microscopes and prepared slides, urinalysis reagent strips, and ⚠ data acquisition systems — Biopac or iWorx — which are common and worth learning properly, because the same systems appear again in exercise physiology and in clinical settings.
• Virtual laboratory software: PhysioEx — ⚠ frequently bundled with the manual, and genuinely useful for experiments that cannot be done on students, such as varying a single physiological parameter. Labster where licensed.
• ⚠ Practical advice specific to this laboratory: buy or borrow a stethoscope and practise taking blood pressures on friends and family. Auscultatory blood pressure is a manual skill with a learning curve, it is on the practical, and it is one of the few things from this course you will use for the rest of your life.
• For the histology: image-occlusion flashcards built from your own department's slides, not from textbook micrographs — ⚠ the same advice as the anatomy laboratory, for the same reason.

Career Pathways

⚠⚠ A 1-credit laboratory in a prerequisite sequence — a gateway rather than a destination, and one of the most consequential in Florida higher education. It appears on the prerequisite list of nearly every health-professions programme in the state, and the grade ranks competitive applicants.

• Registered nurses (SOC 29-1141) — ⚠ A&P I and II with laboratories are near-universal prerequisites for Florida nursing programmes.
• Physical and occupational therapists (SOC 29-1123, 29-1122); physician assistants (SOC 29-1071) — accredited graduate programmes required.
• Respiratory therapists (SOC 29-1126) — ⚠ the spirometry and ventilation material is directly their subject.
• Radiologic technologists (SOC 29-2034); sonographers (SOC 29-2032); dental hygienists (SOC 29-1292).
• Clinical laboratory scientists and technicians (SOC 29-2011, 29-2012) — ⚠ this laboratory is the first taste of the work; licensure requires a NAACLS-accredited programme and Florida licensure.
• Athletic trainers (SOC 29-9091) and exercise physiologists (SOC 29-1128) — ⚠ the ECG and exercise-response exercises lead directly into exercise testing.
• Paramedics (SOC 29-2042); surgical technologists (SOC 29-2055).
• Physicians and dentists (SOC 29-1210s, 29-1021) — ⚠ generally require the majors biology and chemistry sequences instead; check before substituting.

⚠⚠ In every one of these fields, eligibility depends on completing an ACCREDITED OR APPROVED PROGRAMME, not on accumulating courses.

Special Information

⚠⚠ Three things to confirm

1. Register for both halves — APK 2105 and APK 2105L are separate and each is the other's co-requisite.
2. ⚠⚠ Confirm the PREFIX your target programme accepts — BSC or APK — in writing, before the sequence.
3. Confirm the laboratory appears separately on your transcript.

Prerequisites and position

• Prerequisite: APK 2100C OR BSC 1085/L OR APK 2100/L. Co-requisite: APK 2105.
• ⚠ The sequence is genuinely sequential. This half assumes the tissues, the skeleton, the muscular system and the nervous system basics from the first.
• Unlisted but assumed: ⚠ general chemistry. The enzyme experiments, the acid–base material and gas transport are chemistry, and students without it find those sessions harder than they need to be.
• ⚠ Basic arithmetic and graphing are used throughout — lung volume calculations, percentage change, and plotting a response against a variable.

Course format and workload

1 credit, typically 30–45 contact hours — a laboratory meeting of two or three hours per week. ⚠ Note the ratio: far more scheduled time than the credit value suggests. May not be repeated for credit.

Expect 3–5 hours per week outside the session. ⚠ The workload here is laboratory reports rather than memorisation, which is the opposite of the first semester — and the reports take longer than students expect, because interpreting data you collected yourself is harder than reciting a result.

Assessment typically includes practical examinations, laboratory reports, pre-laboratory quizzes and worksheets.

⚠⚠ Using yourself and your classmates as subjects — the part that needs stating

Much of this laboratory involves measuring students.

• ⚠ Participation as a subject is voluntary. A student may decline any procedure — including exercise tests, blood collection or anything they are uncomfortable with — and alternatives (partner data, simulated data, PhysioEx) are normally available. You are not obliged to explain why.
• ⚠⚠ Results are not medical advice and not a diagnosis. A student blood pressure reading, ECG trace or spirometry result taken by a classmate on teaching equipment is an educational exercise. An unexpected finding should be followed up with a clinician — and neither dismissed nor panicked over. Instructors see this every term and will tell you the same thing.
• Privacy. ⚠ Do not share a classmate's measurements outside the laboratory. Personal health information disclosed in a teaching context is still personal.
• Where blood is involved — typing, haematocrit, glucose — ⚠⚠ bloodborne pathogen procedures apply strictly: gloves, single-use lancets, sharps disposal, no sharing of devices, and decontamination protocol. Many institutions now use simulated blood for exactly this reason; follow your department's rules without improvising.
• Exercise components — ⚠ tell the instructor about any cardiovascular, respiratory or musculoskeletal condition before an exercise exercise, and stop if you feel unwell.

⚠ Where students struggle

• ⚠⚠ Auscultatory blood pressure. Hearing Korotkoff sounds reliably takes practice, and a noisy laboratory makes it harder. Practise outside class.
• ECG interpretation. ⚠ Relating the trace to the cardiac events it represents, rather than memorising the shape.
• Spirometry arithmetic. Lung volumes and capacities are simple additions that students routinely confuse; draw the diagram.
• ⚠ Writing about data that did not behave. A result that contradicts the expected physiology is normal and is not a failure — and the report's discussion of sources of error is where the marks are. Students who quietly adjust their numbers to match the textbook are doing the one thing the course is trying to train out of them.
• Underestimating a 1-credit course. ⚠ The credit value understates the time; the reports are the load.

Articulation and transfer

⚠⚠ The same two compounded problems as the rest of this family — the BSC/APK prefix, and the split-versus-integrated packaging with its credit difference. Keep the syllabus and the laboratory manual.

Prefix note. APK is applied kinesiology; BSC general biological science; PCB process biology; ZOO zoology; HSC health science. ⚠ This is the clearest case of prefix divergence in the Florida system, and it matters most here because these are lower-division courses feeding competitive professional admission.

AI Integration

Where AI assistance helps in a physiology laboratory:

• Explaining a mechanism a second way before or after the session.
• Helping structure a laboratory report and improving its technical writing.
• ⚠ Explaining why an unexpected result might have occurred — as a source of hypotheses to check against your own procedure, not as an answer.
• Practice questions for the practical.

⚠⚠ Where it fails, and in this laboratory some of these are safety matters:

• ⚠⚠ It cannot take a measurement, and the measurement is the course. Manual blood pressure, ECG electrode placement and spirometry technique are psychomotor skills assessed on a practical.
• ⚠⚠ Never use a model to interpret a real physiological measurement from yourself or a classmate. It has no history, no context and no accountability, and an alarming answer about a real person's real reading causes real harm. Take an unexpected finding to a clinician.
• Fabricated reference ranges. ⚠ Normal values vary by laboratory, method and population and are checkable; do not take them from a model.
• ⚠⚠ Fabricated data. A model asked for plausible results will produce them. Submitting invented laboratory data is research misconduct in miniature and is treated seriously — and in a course whose central lesson is that real measurements vary, it is also self-defeating.
• Confidently wrong physiological detail — directions of change, reflex responses, hormone effects. Verify against the textbook.

⚠ The prerequisite point, restated because it is the real argument. Physiology is not assessed once and discarded — it is assumed by pathophysiology, pharmacology and every clinical course after it, and the measurement skills from this laboratory are used directly in practice. A student who shortcut it meets the gap where the consequence is a patient rather than a grade.

Academic integrity. Follow the course policy. Submitting generated work as your own violates every Florida institution's policy — ⚠ and health-professions programmes conduct character reviews in which integrity findings are disclosed and frequently disqualifying.