Science Buddies: "Ask an Expert"

Hi,
I am starting 6th grade in the fall at a middle school that requires students to wear all black uniform. From my cousin's experience at this school, she'd said that it can get really hot and uncomfortable wearing black during the hot months. What I am thinking of doing is conducting a science fair project that studies the effects of such dark clothing on students' health, such as body temperature, loss of salt, heart rates, etc....and how this might affect academic performance. I don't have all the ideas worked out yet, as I just started to think about this. I am not sure what equipments are required for this study, how to conduct the control subject, or how long it would take....I have all the time in the world for this study. Right now, I am just reading up on background information, but I do hope to pursuade the school to reconsider its uniform requirement if the study indicates that it should. Any suggestions or comments are greatly appreciated. Thank you

Sydney

Hi Sydney,

What a good idea to do your science fair project over the summer! And your topic is great because it is a question that is of interest to everyone in your school. Of course your primary objective will be to change school policy, but you can work on this indirectly by doing an excellent scientific investigation on the topic.

First, check out the science buddies website on doing a science project and reach about the scientific method, your question, and a background research plan. Basically, you will want to ask a question that can be answered by doing a carefully controlled experiment. However, before you set up your experiment, you need to learn more about your topic.

https://www.sciencebuddies.org/science- ... l?From=Tab

So go ahead and start looking for background information on this subject and learn everything you can about how clothing color affects the thermoregulation. The second part of the inquiry would be to find out what research has been done on the effect of body temperature on academic performance. What you want to do is find everything that has been published on a topic and use that information to design a unique experiment that will answer your questions.

Here are some references to help you get started. Some of these papers are old, but the results are probably valid and will give you an idea of how to design a scientific experiment.

Here is a most interesting article that showed an effect of clothing that allows a comfortable body temperature to sleep and immune response. The researchers found that people slept better and had the ability to resist infections better if they had a comfortable body temperature. You will probably only be able to access the abstract, but I think you will understand the point of the research.

http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/conten ... 390&db=all

Here’s another abstract only that reports that hygroscopicity, or the ability of material to attract water, is important in determining the effect on thermoregulation. Maybe this is something else that you could include in your project.

http://iopscience.iop.org/0965-0393/13/ ... 993F457.c3

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hygroscopy

Since you are going to be going into 6th grade, I recommend that you think about doing an experiment that does not involve working with humans, as this would require informed consent forms from all of your test subjects and formal permission from your local science fair board. I think you can probably design some type of experiment that would involve testing the temperature effect of the black uniform material, comparing results with other colors of fabric that would not required testing humans.

Please let me know if you understood the ideas in these papers or if you have any questions. Please do some searching on the internet to find other information on your topic and let me know what you find.

Also, you should try to find out why the school uniforms are black. To me it would be common sense to have a light-colored summer uniform and a darker, heavier winter uniform, but it would be very helpful for your project to know why black fabric was chosent in the first place. Also, you should find out what the average daytime temperatures are for your area for each month of the school year.


Donna Hardy