“Caffeine stimulates the central nervous system.”
“On the upside, it produces mental clarity and temporarily relieves fatigue.” www.renewalsearch.com/book/the_habits_alcohol_caffeine_sugar.html
“One way that it works is by blocking the enzyme phosphodiesterase from removing the secondary messenger cAMP so that neural signals continue for much longer periods of time (Voet 1277). cAMP is involved in the translation of external cellular stimuli to elicit a chemical response internally within the cell. Blocking the phosphodiesterase enzymes activity is what provides the lengthened response times to chemical signals. 4cAMP and its cAMP-dependent protein kinase lie in equilibrium with cAMP4 and protein kinase and its subunit. When it is in the form cAMP4, ATP will phosporylate the protein and activates it. This will elicit a chemical response. Caffeine blocks the enzyme phosphodiesterase from making the conversion of 4cAMP to 4AMP thus eliciting a greater response…” www.publicstate.iastate.edu/~boy/biochemistry.html
I predict that drip coffee will have a better reaction time than tea as it contains more caffeine, you a sufficient amount of caffeine to make your central nervous system improve.
“In moderate doses (more than 200mg, depending on body weight and physical condition)…” -
Drip Coffee has about 60-180mg of caffeine contained while tea has 40-80mg of caffeine contained. You can see that drip coffee is much closer to the ‘moderate doses’ to make your reactions times better.
Apparatus
- Thermometer
- 100ml container
- Electric kettle
- Drip Coffee
- Tea
- Eye protection goggles
- Cup (enough to pour 100ml or more)
- Reaction Timer
- Light Bulb
- Voltmeter
- Bell Ringer
- Burette
Safety
- Eye protection goggles should be worn at all times as there might be a possible chance of the hot water going to your eyes.
- When carrying your kettle, hold it only at the handle, not at other places of the kettle and slowly pour the water into the cup should remember that the kettle very hot (100°c at the most)
- Standing up and doing the experiment would be more appropriate. If the cup spills, the hot water might come onto your body causing burns to your skin.
Fair Test
To make it a fair test, we must:
- Use the same amount of liquid on the cup.
- Have the same temperature of the liquid.
- To make it more accurate, use a computer to calculate their reactions time instead.
- Take out the water from the electric kettle the same temperature as past experiments.
- Do exactly the same thing you did like in the first experiment.
- You should wait for the same amount of time for the drip coffee or tea to be finished for drinking.
- You should keep the same length away from the bell ringer like in previous experiments.
- Bulb should be at the same voltage.
- Use the same reaction timer and computer.
- Use the same apparatus throughout the experiment.
- After experiments, you should neatly clean the apparatus like in the beginning of the experiment.
Plan
I intend to use two stimuli, an adult and a child. Both are given the same amount drip coffee and tea. But not from back to back experiments as it take “6 hours for one half of the caffeine to be eliminated”. After each experiment both people must have a 12 hour break before doing it again. What both people will do is drink both the same substance, either drip coffee or tea, at the same time and after fifteen minutes, test on the reactions times “it takes that amount of time (15 minutes) for caffeine to enter the bloodstream through the stomach and small intestine” as said from ‘http://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/caff.html’ . As fifteen minutes has passed, we put both people on a chair in front of a table where there is a reaction timer. When a light bulb is flashed, you should keep on using the same voltage throughout the experiment, at them, they press the bell ringer. There will be two other people who will time how long it takes for them to react. Rather than doing that, it is much more accurate, efficient and better to use a reaction timer that times their reactions more accurately. But before giving them either tea of drip coffee, we must first check their reaction time before drinking the substance and see how much faster their reactions became. This experiment could be done repetitively more than once to see their average time and reaction, but do not forget that you only time their reaction per substance after fifteen minutes, not more. You must make them have a 12 hour rest and do the experiment again and again. Taking away their reaction before drinking and after, will prove that caffeine affects human reactions. This experiment could be done to an adult who is old, young, fit, and different in size and height as well as weight as well as children. After, you can change the amounts of tea or drip coffee they drink, which makes the amount of caffeine change as well. You could make the stimuli drink more or less than 100ml to see if there are more patterns to the effects on human reaction times. It will be much more suitable if you choose the stimuli that have the same height. My plan is a good way of extracting information as it is simple and straightforward. Therefore, it makes it more efficient without many errors occurring throughout the experiment. I have used information from the internet and books to make sure that the experiment is close to an optimum perfect. Using a burette you should exactly pour 100ml of hot water onto a cup and you should wait for the same amount of time you did on either drip coffee or tea when you gave it to the stimuli. Also, you should take out the electric kettle with same temperature of water like past experiments. Again, using a reaction timer done by a computer and the computer timing their reaction would be more accurate. Also, both stimuli should be the same length away from the bell ringer. Past work that helped my planning was used when I did physical education. On a board, there would be lots of numbers in random and you had to find all numbers from 1 to 20 without taking them out from the board. Another person who would watch out on what the person will be doing will time how long it takes for the person to finish. This is also another way to calculate a person’s reaction time.
Treatment of Results
After finding the results, I could make a graph to see if there is any correlation between how old you are, how much you weigh as well as your height to how much milligrams of caffeine you drank.
