Science Buddies: "Ask an Expert"

Hi all! Well, I'm just starting on my project, so I guess I'll need some background information. I'm interested in exploring how different types of music affect the productivity of an individual. Are there any books/websites that anyone could recommend? And can anyone give me a brief outline of what I should cover in my background information?

Finally, can anyone give some feedback of how my experiment is designed?
Experiment:

1. Have different 5 genres of music (rock, classical, country, jazz, electronic) being played through an iPod and earbuds
2. Have about 40 people between the ages of 13-16 who will be the test-subjects (~20 male, ~20 female)
3. Play the music for 20 seconds before beginning
4. Test their reaction time with this website and record their results

   Code: Select all

   http://getyourwebsitehere.com/jswb/rttest01.html

5. Repeat with each genre of music

Or should I replace step 3 with some exercise, like memorization of a list of words or something? This should be as controlled as possible. I'm aware of the fact that human testing itself is hard to control, but do you guys have any suggestions? Your help will be greatly appreciated.

Hi,

ScienceBuddies has at least projects on related topics. You might look at them for ideas on how to conduct your test:

https://www.sciencebuddies.org/science- ... p022.shtml

https://www.sciencebuddies.org/science- ... p003.shtml

Best regards,

Barrett L Tomlinson