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Title Who is faster, Adults, or Kids?

Problem Scenario
This project is important because I want to know whose reaction is faster; adults' or kids' and how long it takes their intuition to react to catching a meter stick.

Broad Question
How long does it take for two different types of people to react to something?

Specific Question
How long does it take for kids to catch a meter stick versus adults to catch the meter stick blindfolded and not blindfolded?

Hypothesis
I think it will take adults faster to react to catching the meter stick than it will take youth.

Graph of Hypothesis
My graph:

Independent Variable:
Age of kids/adults

Dependent Variable:
Reaction/time

Variables That Need To Be Controlled:
Meter stick/instructions

Vocabulary List That Needs Explanation
Reaction Time: This is how fast it take for a person to react to something. Auditory: Using your hearing for your reference. Visual: Using your vision for your reference. Reflexes: An action that is preformed without conscious thought as a response to a stimulus. Rods and Cones: A nerve cell in the retina of your eye. Ganglion Cell: A large nerve cell. Thalamus: A gray substance in your brain. Precentral Gyrus: Part of the central lobe that is bounded back.

General Plan
First, I find a meter stick, and start testing people for their reaction times. Then, when I've got all of my data, I put it into my wiki page and work on that.

Potential Problems And Solutions
Problem: I measured in inches, how can I turn that into centimeters? Solution: I use a technique that the teacher showed me how to do on Word Excel.

Safety Or Environmental Concerns
None

Number Of Trials:
60 Trials

Number Of Subjects In Each trial:
2 Subjects in each trial.

When data will be collected
March 2012

Number of Observations:
5 observations.
 * It seems that both adults and kids are better with the visual than the auditory.
 * I see that adults have the faster reaction, which shows that my hypothesis was right.
 * At the beginning, my theory was proven wrong.
 * Then, as time increased and I took more trials, adults' reaction times were faster.
 * Overall, the adults were faster even though I was almost sure that the kids would be faster.

Where will data be collected?:
At school.

Resources and Budget Table

 * Resource: || Meter Stick || Poster board ||
 * Where to get it: || Mr. Biche || Staples? ||

Data Table
media type="custom" key="13768002"

Background Research
Reaction time is testing how fast or slow you react to something and then observing it. Have you ever wondered who was the first to wonder about this? I have, and the one who made it all happen, is Dutch researcher F.C. Donders.

Before 1865, scientists believed that reaction times were too fast to test. One of Donders first experiments was testing electric shock to test reaction time on his subjects' feet.Donders was the first scientist to test reaction times. And he discovered that simple reaction time is shorter than recognition reaction time, and that choice reaction time is longer than both. Simple reaction time is the time required for a subject (person) to react to something prearranged for them. Choice reaction time is referring to the time taken to give one of several responses to several stimuli. And recognition reaction time could not be defined. It is just a reaction time recognized by a scientist I guess. That is not an accurate description, it is just my guess. Donders didn't continue his reaction time research for the rest of his life; he decided to do otherwise. People before Donders considered reaction time to be different from thinking. They thought that thinking was a "mental" and "spiritual" thing and didn't believe that it was the same as what the were testing in the reaction time field.

After years of testing and experimenting, scientists came to the conclusion that infant's reaction time shortens from birth until the mid 20s, and then once at the age of 50 and mid 60s, the reaction time increases. Reaction time lengthens faster as the person gets older and then finally it basically stays the same the rest of their life, increasing in small amounts spontaneously. Reaction time becomes more variable with age, and Alzheimer's disease.

Reaction time also has something to do with reflexes. For example, for my project I dropped the meter stick to see how fast their reaction was. Their reflexes act so they can catch the meter stick. A reflex is an automatic action that your body does in response to something. The steps that happens in your brain when you catch that meter stick: 1) Transduction of the environmental stimulus into a nervous impulse (rods and cones). 2) Processing the neurons of the retina (bipolar and ganglion cells). 3) Transmission of the impulse to the thalamus. 4) Relaying of impulse to the visual cortex via optic radiations. 5) Visual association region recognizes the meaning of visual impulses. 6) Transmission of impulse from the visual association region to Precentral Gyrus. 7) Transmission of the of the motor impulse from the Precentral Gyrus to muscles of the hand. 8) Effecting the movement through the contraction of muscles.

It may seem really complicated, and yes, it is. But what all of those steps are saying is just that your brain goes through all of these steps before you even react.

Detailed Procedure

 * 1) Get notebook ready for data. So basically get your data table ready to be written in.
 * 2) Make sure you have all of your materials needed. In my case, it's a meter stick.
 * 3) Collect a group of people to test.
 * 4) Instruct the person you are testing on to catch the meter stick; once with their eyes closed and once with their eyes open.
 * 5) Write down the data immediately so you don't forget it.
 * 6) Keep repeating step 4 and 5.
 * 7) Once you have all your data, make it into a spreadsheet.
 * 8) Present for science fair!

All Raw Data
And as you can see, the "Adult Visual" was the fastest reaction out of all the categories. However, the second fastest was the "Child Auditory", which I thought was interesting because the adults were faster in a whole different aspect than the kids. The slowest reactions were the "Adults Auditory".

Data Analysis
The Adult Visual was definitely the fastest reaction time yet. The slowest, however, was the Adult Auditory, which I found was interesting because the fastest was also an adult test. Both of the children tests were the slowest. The higher the meter stick was caught, the slower the reaction.

Conclusion
I hypothesized adults will be faster when catching the meter stick. My data supports my hypothesis and my hypothesis was correct.

Benefit to Community and/or Science
My project could be useful to some people in my community, and world wide. Along with my background reseach, my data shows that adults should be faster than kids when it comes to reflexes. Some of the people in the community that this is useful for could be doctors. Because doctors test people's reaction with the thing that they bang on your knee. So let's say that they would take the time to measure how long it takes before the patient kicks their knee up, their data should show that the adults are faster than the kids. Then the doctors can tell if their reaction time is healthy, sense your reaction comes from your brain. If a reaction was delayed, then the doctor can tell if something's wrong. If the kid's is more delayed than the adults, it's probably not that big of a problem. In that case, this experiment could be useful to people in the community in general, because then they can know if their reaction time is above or below average.

Abstract
My experiment was designed to see who was faster, adults, or kids? From the minute I started the experiment, my curiosity for the results expanded. When I first started collecting my data, I was almost positive that the kids would be faster. But as I began collecting more and more data, I changed my mind. I didn't change my hypothesis, however, because I wanted to see if I was right or wrong. I chose to say that the adults would be faster because their reflexes seem to be faster. Have you ever gone hiking with your parents when you were little and they tell you that they should go in front of you in case you fall going down a steep part? Well that's why I chose for the adults to be scientifically faster. I came to find out that I was right about that theory. The results showed the adults in the visual catergory to be dramatically faster than the rest of the data I collected. The data was hard to find who was slower and faster between adults and kids because the scores were all over the place. However, once I made my graph it all smoothed out and I found that my hypothesis was right. Adults are faster than kids.