Hobbies And Interests
Sweet Solutions
Determine how sweet ants prefer their food to be. Dissolve as much sugar as possible into a quarter-cup of water. Remove 1/8 cup and set it aside. Pour the rest into a plastic cup and label it as seven. Add the portion you removed back to the measuring cup and fill it with water to a quarter-cup again. Remove 1/8 cup and pour the rest into a cup labeled as six. Continue until you have filled seven cups labeled one through seven. Add plain water to a final cup and label as zero. Each cup now contains half the sugar concentration of the higher numbered cup next to it. Label eight caps zero through seven and take them outside with your cups. Fill each cap with the solution that corresponds to its number. Arrange the caps in a circle about a foot from an anthill. Every hour observe and take pictures.
Food Preference
Experiment with different foods to conclude whether or not ants really prefer sugary foods. Place three different foods onto separate flat lids and label the lids. Place sugary candy on one lid, cheese on the next and crackers on a third. Place them near an anthill outside. Set out one lid containing plain water to act as your control. Observe several times each day for a week and record patterns you see and the number of ants around each type of food. Graph your results.
Water
Create an experiment that determines if ants prefer sugar water, salt water or fresh water. Collect ants from outside in a plastic container. Place equal amounts of water into three bowls and add two teaspoons of sugar to one and two teaspoons of salt to the second. Leave the third as plain water. Draw three circles on a piece of paper and label as water, sugar water and salt water. Drop a puddle of each type of water into the corresponding circle. Gently empty the ants onto the paper and observe. Record your observations.
Sugar versus Aspartame
Determine whether ants prefer real sugar or aspartame. Pour 5 cm of sand into a terrarium. Place about 150 ants into the terrarium. Label two just as S and A and fill them with 300 ml of water. In the S jug, add 100 ml of sugar. In the A jug, add 10 ml of aspartame. Add 5 ml of the S solution to two petri dishes and label them. Do the same with the A solution. Place an A dish on the left of each terrarium and an S dish on the right. After 10 minutes, take a picture of each dish. Record the picture number, habitat, time and date. Do this every couple of hours for a day and remove the dishes. Count the ants on each dish in your photos to determine which the ants preferred.