Blog 16

Much to our pleasant surprise, our hypothesis was strongly supported by our data! Our hypothesis stated that the popsicles' color would directly influence the subjects' perception of flavor. As you can see in the graph, 70.6% of our test subjects perceived the three popsicles to be three different flavors. Additionally, 17.6% thought two popsicles tasted different, which means that altogether almost every subject's results supported our hypothesis. This was precisely the goal of the experiment, and it shows that our setup worked very well. The saltines between each popsicle was likely a huge factor of this outcome, as it allowed the subjects to completely wipe away the flavor from the previous popsicle. The graph below also provides interesting data; we were curious to see which flavor was most commonly perceived by the subjects, and it shows that each color was perceived as the flavor it is most commonly associated with. Overall, our experiment shows that people's taste perception is undoubtedly influenced by color perception.

Blog 15

I'm excited to say that we have finally begun the actual work for our experiment! Mr. Calos had our supplies ready for us on Monday and we got to work right away. He bought us two ice trays, clear-colored Capri Sun, toothpicks, cups, and color dye. The first step was filling a cup with one packet of Capri Sun and adding two drops of color. The first color we made was green. We stirred the dye around with the straw and then, slowly and meticulously, filled half of the ice tray. It was somewhat of a challenge to make sure each space in the tray was filled with the same amount. We made sure to leave about a centimeter at the top so the cubes wouldn't overflow once they froze. We then repeated the process with the blue dye. After filling one entire tray, we covered it with saran wrap and sticked toothpicks through the plastic into each hole. The purpose of the saran wrap is to create the perfectly flat bottoms of the popsicles. This was another slight challenge, as the toothpicks did not tend to go in straight but preferred to be slanted. Our first tray is frozen by now and tomorrow we will continue by making the other colors. So far, our experiment is really interesting and fun. Once again, our hypothesis is that the color of the popsicle will directly influence the person's perception of the taste even though the flavor of each popsicle is identical.

Blog 14

On Friday, Emma, Sosie, and I further developed our ideas as to how we should carry out our experiment. We are sticking with our original idea of testing how visual perception influences taste perception, and we have come up with some more details for our experimental design. Instead of making actual popsicles, we are going to make smaller versions using an ice tray and coloring each individual cube. Each ice cube will have the exact same flavor, but the color will vary. A test subject will taste three different colored cubes and tell us what they think the flavor is. Between each 'popsicle', the person will eat a saltine for palate-cleansing purposes. After the person has sampled three popsicles, we will provide a list of fruits that are associated to the colors of popsicles, from which the person will determine which flavor each one was. We decided that it would be beneficial on our part if we provided flavor options so that we can more easily graph our results after the experiment. Our hypothesis is as follows: The color of the popsicle will directly influence the subject’s perception of the taste even though the flavor of each Popsicle is identical.

Blog 13

It's time to begin our new experiment! The topic of this last experiment of the year is Human Anatomy and Physiology. Sosie, Emma, and I grouped together and, after much brainstorming, we came up with an idea of testing color and taste perception. In order to test this, we are going to make popsicles that are all different colors but have the same flavor. We are hypothesizing that this will cause the people we test to perceive how they think the popsicle will taste solely by looking at the color. We are going to make our own popsicles and use color dye to manipulate the appearance, while giving them all a subtle flavor so that it will be able to be perceived differently among the three differently colored popsicles.
This is about as far as we have gotten, but we are exciting to finish designing and soon begin our experiment!

Blog #11

Eyster HC. CATALASE ACTIVITY IN CHLOROPLAST PIGMENT DEFICIENT TYPES OF CORN.Plant Physiol. 1950 Oct;25(4):630–638.

OSKI VM, SMITH JHC. Chlorophyll formation in a mutant, white seedling-3. Arch Biochem Biophys. 1951 Nov;34(1):189–195.

Trumble, PhD. Effect of Nitrogen Fertilization on Aphis gossypii: Variation in Size, Color, and Reproduction. Journal of Economic Entomology. 2001 Feb;1(1):27-32.

These documents were initially really difficult to comprehend but they ended up being helpful in the process of forming our hypothesis and setup. We were not sure which variable to manipulate that would affect color of the corn, so these resources helped us understand the effects of fertilizer. These documents are really complex so we ended up getting a deeper understanding of genetics pertaining to corn.

Blog #12

Exciting news! We are finally starting to see some growth in our corn plants. Incidentally, the containers with no fertilizer have grown the most. The ones with 1/2 fertilizer have grown some, and the containers with the most fertilizer haven't at all. We were surprised to find this as we anticipated that the fertilizer would positively influence the plants' growth. However, Mr. Calos pointed out that the germination process is different than the actual growing process so perhaps that is why we haven't seen more growth from the plants with more fertilizer. So far, our daily activities have included watering the plants, checking to see any differences, and recording those that we do see on our shared google doc. We have also been taking pictures of the plants to track progress. Here is a picture of the plant with the most progress and most fertilizer. This one is what we presume to be a non-albino plant.

Blog #10

Our organism and supplies have arrived! Last Wednesday, we were able to start setting up our experiment and plan out our first steps. To start, we found plastic containers (essentially small salad containers) to perfectly accommodate our corn seeds. We figured out the numbers and ratios for our containers so we would be able to properly fill them with the right amount of soil and fertilizer.
After we worked out the logistics, we took a cup of fertilizer pellets and ground them into a fine powder with a coffee grinder. We then filled each of the plastic containers with soil and mixed in the fertilizer. During this process, we weighed the containers in units of grams to make sure they had the correct amount. This was perhaps the most enjoyable part of the experiment thus far, as we really got to be hands-on. We labeled each of the containers according to the variation of corn we would plant inside. The final step of the setup is to figure out how many corn seeds should go in each container. Then, we will plant them at last! The research we've done has indicated that it should take roughly 3-6 days to start seeing growth. So far we do not have any pictures but stay tuned for an upcoming post!
Here is a picture of our newly planted corn seeds.

Blog #9

It's time for the genetics unit! Mary, Sosie, and I selected albino corn for our experiment. We are very excited to order and receive our dihybrid albino corn seeds so we can get started.

Some background information: the purpose of this experiment is to test the phenotype of a fast plant. A phenotype is the physical characteristics of an organism, as influenced by genes. A gene is a unit of heredity that is passed on from generation to generation and is responsible for the DNA makeup of offspring. In this research project we are choosing an environmental variable that influences the phenotype of an organism.

The variable we decided to test is fertilizer. We are  going to focus on how the amount of nitrogen in the fertilizer and see how it affects the growth and color of the corn. Albinism in corn is a genetic mutation so it is hard to tell if the seeds are going to be albino or regular until they are growing, so we will not know how they turn out until we start the experiment. We haven't yet come up with a hypothesis, as we are still coming up with details about the design of the experiment.

Blog Post #8

I collaborated with Theresa on research of the evolution of dolphin's social groups, which are called pods.
We hypothesized that all dolphin species would live in relatively large groups consisting of hundreds of individuals. We found an evolutionary tree and modified it to trace the specific trait we were studying. This tree portrays the ancestry of the families Delphinidae and Globicephala. Here is the modified version of our cladogram:

The cladogram indicates different sizes of pods with each color dots. The red dots represent large pods (100-1000), blue represents medium sized pods (20-100), and green represents the smallest pods comprised of 2-20 individuals. This information shows that dolphins can really live in any size pods. They can even be based on environmental factors, such as food availability and predators in the area.

We were able to conclude that the research we conducted rejects our hypothesis. This is because there are an array of pod sizes within each genus, and even within each species of dolphins. Our hypothesis is partially true but it is much too narrow to categorize all dolphin pods as one relative size, when the size can be anywhere along a spectrum.