Science Buddies: "Ask an Expert"

Hey my partner and I have an interesting topic idea for our science project. We are going to decide if different types of music affect a spider's ability to make its way through a maze. We need as much help we can get with any aspect possible. Thanks a lot

Hi NYJfootball17,

I think this is a cool idea for a project.
I am going to start this off by asking a bunch of questions...

Do you have any evidence that spiders can find their way round mazes? Can you find any resources on the internet about spiders and mazes and what other people have done?

What do you think about having some kind of bait/food for the spider to be trying to find in the maze?

How would you measure the difference between the performance of the spider in the maze under your conditions of music/no music/different music? How about timing it?

Do you think the spider will learn the maze if the same spider is used over and over in the same maze? Is that something you can measure/test? or is it something you want to avoid?

Start thinking and doing some searches to see what you can find out there!

-Caroline

Hullo NYJfootball17,

In addition to Carolin's e-mail, starting researching! Some good sites are:

1. scholar.google.com
2. ask.com
3. publish.google.com

Check out all of these search engines, using "music and spiders" or some variation of that.

Hope this helps.

Regards,
Sareena