measuring taste threshold

[IsabelV]

Hello,
My daughter is doing a project from science buddies on taste threshold. Doing the experiment and the data table was good. Now we need to make the gragh and we keep going around in circles and can't seem to get it or what type of graph to use. It probably is not that difficult. We did get a response before but both my daughter and I are still confused. Can anyone please help. We are getting close to the deadline.

[donnahardy2]

Hi,

This is a great experiment and it sounds like you have some results. I think you are doing this project from the Science Buddies website:

https://www.sciencebuddies.org/science- ... p013.shtml

One way to plot the data would be to do a bar graph and make a 3-bar graph for each individual who participated in the experiment. So there would be one bar for sweet, salty, sour (or sucrose, sodium chloride, and vinegar) and the other axis would be the % of the substance that represents the taste threshold. If you had multiple participants, you could make one bar graph each for sucrose, sodium chloride and vinegar, and make a separate bar graph for each type of taste. That would give the viewer an instant summary of the results.

Please let me exactly how you set up your experiment and how many tasters you had if this is not clear.

Donna Hardy

[IsabelV]

Thank You so much for responding.

Well, my daughter followed the procedures that are here in science buddies. She actually had a total of four participants. We weren't sure if for this experiment she needed to repeat the trial three times so we did just in case. She has all the data for each trial.
It's clear on how to graph the first part of your response, doing the three bar graph. But for the second part a bit unclear.
Also, if we graph the results for each individual for all three trials that would be alot of graphs. Is there a way of putting the data into less graphs.
Thank You so much

[donnahardy2]

Hi ,

Results in triplicate. Excellent! If you have three trials for 4 individuals, then I would make just 3 graphs, one for each taste category containing 4 bars to represent the results of each individual. You can put the results of each participant on the x axis and the % concentration on the y axis. To make the graphs proportional, you can use a semi-log y axis, so there is an equal distance between 0.001, 0.01, .1, and 1%. If there is any variation in the trials for each individual, you can split the bar to show the variation. Does this help?

Best regards,


Donna Hardy.

[IsabelV]

My daughter finished her project. Thank you Donna Hardy for your help.

[donnahardy2]

Hi,

You are welcome. It sounds like she (and you) did a great job! I'm glad we were able to help.

Donna Hardy