Sceince Project

Question
QUESTION: I want to do a project on my rat ringo to see if music affects his sleep is this a good project

ANSWER: I had this question from another person recently and it turned out to be a great project. Here is what I suggested/

Here is a good suggestion. You take 3 mice put them in different areas of your home so they cannot hear the other mice music. One gets rock music, one get classical, and one get no music at all. Then you need to give them some sort of task. Something like a maze or hidden object to find(food is good). Time them all to begin with, then begin them listening to music for a set number of hours. You decide on the time frame. Every day have the mice do the same task to preform and document if they improve their time or not. Your chart should show which mice did better at the task over time vs the other. Another chart can show if any improvement or not occurred in their behavior, cleaning, eating, ect and document everything that happens.





Here are some sites that give other options you can do with rats for science fair.


http://www.free-science-fair-projects.com/Free-Science-Fair-Project.aspx?Project

http://www.reekoscience.com/Resources/ScienceFairSecrets.aspx

http://www.juliantrubin.com/fairprojects/zoology/micerodents.html

http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&VideoID=49979684


---------- FOLLOW-UP ----------

QUESTION: would seeing if music affected his mood my parents wont let my get any more rats

Answer
Well you could use a single rat and do periods of different music. Depending on how long you have you can do 3 days of classical, 3 days rock, and three days nothing. Record if he eats more/less, is more active or not, and if he is any more friendlier or not. Things of that sort. If you have longer you can extend the time to a week. Make sure to record what he eats, drinks, ect each days to see a difference. What is your hypothesis?