and I'm going to be talking to you today

about how to use our spirometer.

Now, our spirometer is this little device right here,

and it's used to measure tidal volumes from the lungs

or vital capacity from the lungs.

You basically breathe through the device.

Now, if you're going to be breathing through a device,

there's a couple things that you need to know.

You need to keep the device sterile.

So we have a little bacterial filter that comes with the kit,

and you can buy more of these if you want to,

but that has to be attached to the spirometer.

And then we also have these disposable mouthpieces

that get attached to the bacterial filter.

We also have these nose clips,

and the reason why you want to use a nose clip

is because you don't want the subject or student

breathing through their nose;

they're supposed to just be breathing through their mouth

to look at tidal volumes and lung capacity.

Now, there's a couple of key things

that you need to know about the spirometer

to get good data.

One is that the spirometer needs to be zeroed

in the position that it's going to be used,

and it needs to sit still.

So if I'm going to be using the spirometer

at about this level, I need to make sure that once

I plug it into the LabQuest, I zero it in that position

and I don't bend back or forth or move from side to side.

So let me just put the spirometer together.

Another important thing is that there is

a little label on the spirometer that says inlet.

This is the side that you want to breathe through.

So I'm going to take the bacterial filter

and I'm going to attach it to the side that says inlet.

Then I'm going to put one of these mouthpieces

on the bacterial filter.

And then I'm going to... untie this cable...

and plug the spirometer into the LabQuest.

And what you should see now over at the LabQuest

is that there's a flow rate that's being displayed,

but there really shouldn't be any flow rate.

I'm not breathing through it, nothing's happening.

So I need to zero the device

to make sure that there's no flow.

So I'm going to be using it in about this position.

So what I'm going to do next is zero the spirometer.

And to zero the spirometer, all that I need to do

is just tap on the meter screen.

I should just be able to select a zero right there.

And now you should see that the flow rate is very close to zero.

It's fluctuating between -0.002 and -0.001,

which is effectively zero.

Now the next thing that I'm going to have to do

is put this little nosepiece on my nose

and then breathe through the spirometer.

But before I do that, let me just tell you a few things.

I'm going to just be holding the spirometer like this.

I need to make sure that I do not blow

through this little mouthpiece.

I don't want to use it like a trumpet.

I don't want to put the mouthpiece up to my lips

and -- [blows] -- blow like that.

I want the mouthpiece in my mouth to get accurate data.

So what I'm going to do is put this back on the spirometer.

I'm going to place this in my mouth,

the mouthpiece in my mouth.

Put the nosepiece on.

And then I'm going to take two normal breaths,

and then I'm going to breathe in very deeply

and exhale very deep -- and exhale forcefully

and then collect another breath.

So let's just do that.

So I'm going to put this on my nose.

Like that.

Now I'm going to begin data collection.

[exhales forcefully]

Let me take this off my nose.

And let's look at the volume

just by tapping here, going to Volume.

So let me just point a few things out

using the LabQuest stylus here.

You can see that each one of these peaks here,

so one, two, three, you can see

that the trough of each peak, here and here,

don't fall all the way back to zero,

just right there and right there.

Now, you can adjust that using a baseline adjustment

to bring them back to zero.

And you do that by doing the following:

You go to the Analyze tab.

And then go to Advanced, right here.

And then you'll see these three things come up,

and what you want to select is Baseline Adjustment.

And then select Volume.

Now you can see right here

the adjustment right now is zero,

and I can increase it or decrease it.

So I'm going to make it negative,

and you can see now the baseline rises up.

But I don't want to do that;

I want to bring it down the other way.

A little bit more. There we go.

And now you can see that the trough

from this peak gets really close to zero,

and the trough from this peak falls back to zero.

Then you can just select OK.

And now that baseline adjustment has been applied

to your data here in this graph.

All right, so now that I've done the baseline adjustment,

let's just calculate some tidal volumes here.

So I can select a region here.

That's one tidal volume.

And let's go to Analyze and go to Statistics.

Select Volume.

And you can see right here the delta y,

that's about 1.131 liters.

And let's just turn that off now.

And let's pick another tidal volume

from here to here.

And I can go to Analyze again, Statistics, select Volume.

And you can see in that case again,

we're at about a delta y of 1.031 liters.

So let's turn that off again.

And just look at my maximal inhalation and then exhalation.

So we can go from this whole region about here to here.

Let's go to Analyze again.

Statistics, Volume.

And the delta y is 5.336 liters.

I'll just turn that off again.

Now, there is another way to calculate tidal volumes

or to look at the difference in an x and a y coordinate

if I make a selection, and that's using

what we call the delta window.

And if I go to Analyze here, I can also go to --

if I go to Analyze here, I can also go to Delta.

I'm going to select the Graph 1 because Graph 1 is on volume.

And now I can highlight a region.

I'm just going to drag from the very top of this peak down.

Because what I'm really interested in

is the height of the peak

down to the bottom of the peak.

And you can see in this case, the delta y,

it's saying, is about 1.294.

So a little bit different than what we measured,

but it's 1.294 liters in that case.

Let's measure this one here.

That's 1.216 liters.

And then let's look at

from the top of this peak to the bottom.

Let me just grab that little bit there to there.

And that's 5.118 liters.

So for more information about our spirometer

or other physiology products,

visit our website at www.vernier.com.