Science Projects With One Minute Timers
Accuracy and precision are important aspects of a well-designed science experiment. Because of this, one-minute timers can be helpful tools for many science fair projects. No matter which field you are interested in studying, you'll probably be able to come up with an appropriate project that takes advantage of a one-minute timer.
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Are Warmups Important?
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If you are on a sports team, this may be just the science project for you. You've probably heard coaches and experienced athletes discussing the importance of warming up before a game. You can test out whether this claim is true with your own sports team. Choose one half of the players on your team randomly and have them warmup. Then have all the players run as fast as they can for exactly one minute, using a timer to make sure that they all stop after sixty seconds. Measure how far each player ran, and then analyze your data to see whether the players who warmed up ran faster, on average, than those who did not.
Visual Memory Vs. Auditory Memory
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To complete this science project, you'll need at least twenty subjects. Make up twenty word pairs, such as "cat, foot" or "blanket, picture," and write them in a list. Give half (10) of your subjects the list to study for exactly sixty seconds, setting a one-minute timer and instructing them to stop looking at the list when the timer goes off. Then give each of these subjects an oral test by randomly reading one of the two words in each pair and instructing them to respond with the other word in the pair. Take data on how many word pairs they remember correctly. For the other half of your subjects, read them the list of words orally over and over for sixty seconds, stopping when the timer goes off, and then administer the test. You can then analyze your data to see which subjects remembered more of the word pairs: those who studied the pairs visually, or those who studied the pairs by hearing them.
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Music and Typing Speed
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Many people working in office positions claim that listening to music helps them work more efficiently, at least when doing "busywork." Test this hypothesis by doing a science project on the relationship between listening to music and typing speed. To do this, simply have half your subjects copy a full page of text, having them stop when the one-minute timer goes off. Then count up the words that they typed to calculate their wpm, or words-per-minute. Subtract two wpm for each word that they typed incorrectly. Repeat this experiment with the other subjects, but this time have the subjects listening to music during the sixty-second typing session. Compare the results of the two groups to evaluate whether music has a positive or a negative effect on typing speed. If you would like, you can make this project more complex by comparing which music affects typing speed the most: music with a fast tempo or music with a slow tempo.
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References
- Photo Credit This digital timer will certainly be useful in every kitchen. image by Werg from Fotolia.com
