• Question: Tell us a bit more about your idea for a research project, how could the students help you?

    Asked by to Anthony, Cathal, Hannah, Jade, Sallie on 6 Mar 2017. This question was also asked by .
    • Photo: Sallie Baxendale

      Sallie Baxendale answered on 6 Mar 2017:

      I’m interested in friendship and the way we decide who we like and who we don’t.
      Scientists know that people tend to think that attractive people are nicer, kinder and more intelligent than people who aren’t so attractive. Its unfair but that’s how people seem to work.
      I want to find out whether the opposite is true. If you hear nice or nasty things about someone before you see them, does that change how attractive you think they are when you see them.
      You can help me design an experiment o test this out. We would need to find some pictures of people who aren’t famous and that you don’t know. We would ask one set of people to just say out of 10 how attractive they think that person is. We would tell another group of people lots of nice things about the person before we showed then the photo and then aske then to say how attractive they thought the person was. In the last ‘condition’ we would tell a group of people lots of horrible, nasty things about the person before we showed them the photo and asked them how attractive they thought someone was. You can help design the experiment by coming up with the nice and nasty stories for the photo’s and by dividing up groups in your school to run the experiment.

    • Photo: Anthony Caravaggi

      Anthony Caravaggi answered on 6 Mar 2017:

      Thousands of people feed birds in the UK every day, spending millions of pounds every year. But is it a good use of money? Do the birds eat all these foods? Do they have favourites and/or foods they really don’t like? I’d like to find out the answers to these questions and more, with the help of the students.

      We could find out by putting three different types of food out for the birds using hanging bird feeders, and weighing what’s left. We could even put a small tray below the feeder with a mesh over the top to see what the birds drop or throw away. Will they eat more fat balls, peanuts, or sunflower seeds? There are loads of questions we could ask and things we could discover about birds and the best ways to feed them. I want the students to help me design an experiment and ask questions which will be interesting for them and beneficial for birds. The students can work as a large team, or as smaller groups. They’ll learn a lot about birds and other animal species in the UK, and have fun doing it.

    • Photo: Hannah Grist

      Hannah Grist answered on 7 Mar 2017:

      It really depends on what the students are interested in! The best science happens when you share all your ideas and come up with a question that perhaps we couldn’t have thought of individually. Sometimes the students are much better at this than I could be, because I have been doing this for too long, and I get too focused…
      So, why not think of questions you have about animals and plants in your local environment that we could test. For example, why are pigeons all different colours? How do bees find flowers? How far can snails walk in a day? Then we can chat about how we would test these using science…

    • Photo: Cathal Breen

      Cathal Breen answered on 7 Mar 2017:

      Discovering someone unconscious is a very scary experience. Knowing what to do then and there can mean the difference in their survival. My research wants to enable communities and the public to better understand what is happening to the person who is unconscious through use of their smart mobile phones. Life support requires training and practice and is difficult for everyone to achieve. By providing access to smart phone apps that assist in determining if a person has a pulse or not will inform of what actions in the life support flow chart are required. Better and earlier diagnosis could enhance the chances of an unconscious person surviving this scary experience.

    • Photo: Jade Owen

      Jade Owen answered on 9 Mar 2017:

      Different people can breathe in different amounts of air – and this can effect how well they take to some medicines for things such as asthma.

      So my idea for a research project is to see what the lung capacity (how much air you can breathe in) is of lots of different people in primary schools as see if a bigger/smaller capacity allows the person to shoot a blow dart further or not.

      We could even look to see if there are differences between those who live in the country compared to the city.

      But I need help!

      For the blow dart what tube should we use and what should be used for the dart?
      Is inside or outside better?
      How will you spot where the dart landed?
      How will you measure how far it went?

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