Sixth Grade: Full of Hot Air? The Sixth-Grade Science Class Experiments with Vital Lung Capacity As one of a series of lessons on animal organ systems, the Sixth-Grade Science Class conducted an experiment to discover the relationship between height and vital capacity of the lungs. Vital capacity is the amount of air that a person can exhale in one continuous breath after having taken a deliberately deep breath. Eight volunteers from the class used lung volume bags to determine their average vital capacity over three trials. The averages ranged from 2 liters to 4.6 liters. The class then plotted each volunteer's height and average vital capacity on a graph to see if there was a linear relationship between the two. After analyzing the graph, the students concluded that, in general, the taller volunteers did have a greater vital capacity than the shorter ones. The equipment needed to conduct this experiment was purchased for the Science Lab with a grant from the Big Shoulders Fund.