Pulse
Pulse is the beat you feel in your wrist or neck each time your heart pumps blood.
A pump pushes water through a garden hose in steady bursts. Each burst makes the hose walls bulge out a bit as the water surges past. Your heart does the same thing — each beat pushes blood out and stretches your artery walls. You feel that stretch as a beat when you press a finger to your wrist.
Explaining pulse by grade level
Press two fingers on the side of your neck. You can feel a small beat under your skin. Each beat means your heart just pushed blood through your body. When you run, the beats come faster because your body needs more blood.
Projects that explore pulse
Each heartbeat sends a pressure wave through every artery in the body. You can find this beat in more places than just the wrist. At the wrist it travels through the radial artery; at the neck, the carotid artery; and behind the knee, a different artery carrying blood to that region. Each pulse point connects to a specific part of the body. As pressure rises during systole (the pumping phase) and falls during diastole (the resting phase), a stethoscope can help you match the pulse to the heart sounds.
The pulse beat you feel in your wrist or neck can vary from person to person. Measuring the brachial pulse (the beat at the inner arm) of 25 males and 25 females reveals a six-beat difference in resting rate. Females averaged 85 beats per minute while males averaged 79, suggesting that gender may affect how often the heart pumps blood at rest.