Music+and+Reading+Experiment

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Title
Musical Reading

Problem Scenario
If someone wanted to increase the speed of their reading.

Broad Question
Does music affect your reading?

Specific Question
Does listening to music while reading affect the speed you read?

Hypothesis
I think for the most part it will affect the speed of your reading in a positive manner, because i think it will isolate you and your book and you wont get distracted with surrounding noises.

General Plan
1. Get a small group of about 5 or 6 people 2. Have them all read a short paragraph and have it timed and recorded 3. Introduce music into the situation and have them read a different paragraph with the same amount of words 4. Time them while they read a different paragraph 5. Compare each person time, and set up a bar graph 6. Figure out the statistics

Experimental Design
(add the correct headings from the experimental design page before beginning)

Resources and Budget Table

 * Item || Number needed || Where I will get this || Cost ||

Detailed Procedure
I'm going to get a group of people together probably around five or six and all have them read the same paragraph I wrote, I am going to time each person and right down there individual times. Then after each persons data has been collected I will have them read a new paragraph but with the same amount of words in the paragraph. But there is going to be music introduced into there reading. They will have headphones in while they read there paraphraph. And that data will be collected too. After all data is collected from both experiments I will but the data into a bar graph and compare both sets of data. And figure out the statistic of weither or not ready affects the speed of your reading.

Time Line
Start my experiment Monday February 11th (have three weeks to finish it. Due March 1st) Start analyses Monday February 4th (due Thursday March 7th) Start discussion Monday 11th (due Friday February 15th) Start poster Monday March 18th (due Friday March 18th) KMS SCIENCE FAIR MARCH 29th SCIENCE FAIR MAY 9th

Under Raw Data

All Raw Data

 * People || Without Music || With Music ||
 * Subject #1 || 223 || 270 ||
 * Subject #2 || 220 || 171 ||
 * Subject #3 || 139 || 151 ||
 * Subject #4 || 216 || 284 ||
 * Subject #5 || 190 || 123 ||
 * Subject #6 || 324 || 345 ||
 * Subject #7 || 260 || 294 ||
 * Subject #8 || 233 || 260 ||
 * Subject #9 || 324 || 316 ||
 * Subject #10 || 250 || 217 ||
 * Subject #11 || 255 || 230 ||
 * Subject #12 || 195 || 175 ||
 * Subject #13 || 240 || 230 ||

**Graphs**

Results
My results were that my hypothesis was wrong, and reading may cause for more distractions than nessacery and cause it to be harder for some individuals to become more focused on the song that's playing than the music itself

Conclusion
My Conclusion was different from my hypothesis it shows from my experiment that people tend to read more accurately without music, only four people showed on my chart could focus better while reading and listening to music at the same time.

Discussion
The trends and patters shown on my project are that reading without music tends to be the better result on the accuracy and speed of an individual. The relationship between my two variables are not related in anyway. Yes i was able to answer my experiment question, and it came to the conclusion that reading without music is more efficient for most part. My experiment didn't have any problems and was completed without any complications. My experiment could be improved by testing more people for efficiency.

Benefit to Community and/or Science
This may benefit the community because it may help slower or easily distracted people focus more on the book and it there reading skills may excel

Background Research
Let's start looking at the building blocks of the brain. As previously stated, the brain consists of about 100 billion cells. Most of these cells are called neurons. A neuron is basically an on/off switch just like the one you use to control the lights in your home. It is either in a resting state (off) or it is shooting an electrical impulse down a wire (on). It has a cell body, a long little wire (the "wire" is called an axon), and at the very end it has a little part that shoots out a chemical. This chemical goes across a gap (synapse) where it triggers another neuron to send a message. There are a lot of these neurons sending messages down a wire (axon). By the way, each of these billions of axons is generating a small amount of electrical charge; this total power has been estimated to equal a 60 watt bulb. Doctors have learned that measuring this electrical activity can tell how the brain is working. A device that measures electrical activity in the brain is called an EEG (electroencephalograph). Information from our eyes goes to areas at the very back of the brain. We've all seen cartoons where the rabbit gets hit on the head and the rabbit sees stars. This can actually happen in human beings (trust me, not a good thing to do at home!). If you take a hard enough blow to the back of the head, this brain area bangs against back of your skull. This stimulates it and you can see stars and flashing lights. Remember those two hemispheres? Each hemisphere processes half the visual information. Visual information that we see on the left gets processed by the right hemisphere. Information on the right gets processed by the left hemisphere. Remember, wires that bring in information to the brain are "crossed"--visual information from the left goes to the right brain.

Abstract
What i did was i wrote two sperate short stories around the same complexity and and length,and took thriteen people (random number has no specific reasoning) and one at a time i took them in the hall and had them read a story without music and i timed them for one minute, then did the same with a different story but with music introdused. I collected the data counting how many words each person read during my experiment, and then graphed my data.