General science

Question

where can i find lab rats? also How can i find how the affect of short term memory loss differs in girls and boys?

Answer

Look up "Lab mice" under "zoology."&nbsp; The question was answered on 10/21/2006.&nbsp;&nbsp;<BR><BR>Short term memory loss in boys and girls -- now this sounds like an interesting science fair project.<BR><BR>The hardest part of setting up your experiment may be insuring that your respondents are an unbiased sample of the population.&nbsp; You could send out invitations to all your classmates and say that you are conducting a memory experiment after school.&nbsp; But that might sound boring to&nbsp;boys who would rather play ball.&nbsp; Yes,&nbsp;I am aware that girls play ball as well -- however there might not be as many of them.&nbsp;&nbsp;<BR>And the ones that&nbsp;do show up -- might&nbsp;be the nonathletes, so your results might not&nbsp;represent a valid cross section of the population.&nbsp;&nbsp;<BR><BR>The next part of your experiment would be&nbsp;choosing the questions.&nbsp; You might want some auditory&nbsp;questions (call out&nbsp;some&nbsp;letters, names, etc., then ask the respondents to write down however many they can remember), some visual&nbsp;questions&nbsp;(show pictures of letters, numbers,&nbsp;or whatever), then ask respondents to write down however many they can remember.&nbsp;&nbsp;Also&nbsp;maybe&nbsp;try visual and&nbsp;auditory -- show pictures and&nbsp;announce what they are&nbsp;-- then&nbsp;ask respondents to write down how many they can remember.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<BR>&nbsp;&nbsp;<BR>It just occurred to me that I might be missing the point of your question.&nbsp; Maybe you'd like to compare boys, girls, and lab rats.&nbsp; See if a lab rat can work his way through a maze, then see if your classmates can do the same.&nbsp; Hmmm....usually "short term memory" means seconds rather than minutes, so maybe this is not what you're getting at.&nbsp; It might be hard constructing a maze&nbsp;with a lot of dead ends that a boy or girl would have to work his way through (or remember how to get out), but it could be&nbsp;fun as well.&nbsp;&nbsp; But again there are confounding factors -- do boys crawl faster than girls, or did they remember the maze better?&nbsp; &nbsp;&nbsp;<BR><BR>The next step would be&nbsp;analyzing results.&nbsp; Now your boys' scores might be&nbsp;75% (on average&nbsp;boys were able to remember 75% of the data items), and girls' scores might be&nbsp;75.1% (on average they were able to remember 75.1% of the data items).&nbsp; Does this mean&nbsp;that girls have better short term memory than boys -- not necessarily; it could be random chance.&nbsp;&nbsp;There are statistical tests that can tell you whether&nbsp;it's random chance or there is a significant difference.&nbsp; I&nbsp;would not expect a middle school student to&nbsp;use them though.&nbsp; <BR><BR>&nbsp;&nbsp;<BR>Joe McCollum<BR>Information Technology Specialist<BR>Forest Inventory and Analysis<BR>Knoxville, TN<BR><BR> http://vrd.askvrd.org/services/answerschema.xml