Can fitness be measured in a laboratory setting? If...

[cl3v3r boy]

...so, give an example.?

[jgrosse25554]

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[June]

i dont think so

[sophia]

This is just my opinion...Fitness is the ability of an individual to reproduce, which is measurable if you have the right species. If you wanted to measure fitness in a laboratory setting, it should be possible because scientists do it all the time. All you have to do is pick a species that you can measure the fitness of. A good species should have a short life cycle and you should be able to measure the number of offspring that were produced. Fruit flies (drosophila melanogaster) are a popular species to study because of their short life cycle.

en.wikipedia.org (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fitness_%28biology%29http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drosophila#Life_cycle_and_ecology)

[kisbeginswithk]

if you mean physical fitness, then yes, it can! and it's done all the time! chances are you see fitness being tested every day.. ever seen that comcast power boost commercial with the speed walker? see all those wires he's hooked up to? fitness testing. or the gatorade commercials with some famous athlete or other on an exercise bike..hooked up to machines? fitness testing. basically, there are numerical values for every aspect of fitness - from how fit your muscles are to how fit any organ system in your body is, and there are known "normal" values, from normal values under strenuous conditions (ex: prolonged exercise) to normal values at rest. and how did they come up with these numbers? testing in laboratories. deviations in the values could signal you are either more or less fit than average. for example, in adults, "normal" resting heart rate is anywhere from 60-100 beats per minute, so values below 60 should be considered unhealthy or less fit than normal right? usually they are. however, in extremely well-conditioned athletes (think michael jordan, lance armstrong) their cardiovascular systems (heart&lungs) are so fit that their hearts don't have to work as hard to keep them alive (blood flowing, oxygen to tissues) - they actually have way slower heart rates than average - 40-60 beats per minute, this is known as "physiologic bradycardia", physiologic meaning normal, and bradycardia meaning a slower heart rate - their heart rates are NORMALLY slower than usual and this means they are MUCH fitter than your average joe =)