Science Buddies: "Ask an Expert"

ok, i just learned that women blinks two times more than men and i thought it was pretty interesting.so i decided to do something similar for my science fair.
here this is my question. Do men have better memory because they blink less than women?
i just made this topic up out of nowhere and i am not even sure if i could do this or not(too much independent variables?), if i could, is it good enough for a grade 9 science fair and will i have time for it? i only have 7 days left!!!
thanks in advance

Hi,

This is a very interesting and unique idea. I noticed that none of the other experts have replied to your inquiry, and I think this is probably because this inquiry because the topic is so unusual. You have a short amount of time to do this, but here is a suggestion that may help you meet your deadline and have a successful project.

Here is a science fair project on blinking that you can adapt to your idea. You might want to compare the results of males and females to test your hypothesis.

http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/hom ... _fun/83761

The one challenging feature of your project idea is the lack of published references on the study of blinking. I was not able to easily find any good references. Generally with a science fair project, you want to read background information and then design an experiment that will add to the knowledge on the topic. The topic is a very good topic and you should be able to a complete project if you can get some volunteers to participate in your experiment.

Next, go to the science buddies website and read through the steps of doing a science project.

https://www.sciencebuddies.org/science- ... ndex.shtml

Make sure you include every step of the project guide in your write up. Start with a question first, and design a controlled experiment to answer the question. Remember that the teacher and science fair judges will be looking to see if you have included background scientific information, some actual results, a control, and if your conclusion supports your hypothesis and results.

I think you can make this a very good project. Let us know if you have any questions.

Good luck!

Donna Hardy

Hi,

There's an additional issue to consider here. Let's say that men do have better memory (remember, you will need background sources to back that fact up!). Let's also say that men blink more than women. However, consider this: men are also slightly larger than women, which means they have larger brains. Men also have higher levels of testosterone. An alternative explanation might be that men have better memory because their brains are bigger or because they have more testosterone; if you just look at the difference between men and women, you really can't say whether or not blinking might explain this difference.

To get around this problem, what you will want to do is to look within men and within women at people with different rates of blinking, and then try to correlate that to memory. So, you would want to have some kind of memory test, and some kind of blinking measurement.

For the blinking measurement, I heard somewhere that people blink twice as much when on TV (e.g. knowingly exposed to a video camera) than they do when not on TV. I have no idea whether or not it's true, but it's something to keep in mind for your experimental design.

Hi there,

I agree with both Donna and Melissa. You have a very interesting and unique experiment, AND you will have trouble correlating your results to the rate of blinking if you focus only on gender. To clarify Melissa's suggestion, you should find a number of people, determine their blinking rates, and give each of them a memory test. Then you can see if their scores on the memory test relate to their blinking rates. Then you can do a separate analysis to see if their scores are related to gender. By looking at gender and blinking independently, you will be able to say something about how each of those things might affect memory.

I hope this helps. Keep us posted about your progress!

Heather