Hobbies And Interests
Developing a Hypothesis
Scientific experiments seek to prove or disprove a specific hypothesis. A hypothesis is an educated guess about how part of the world works. When developing your hypothesis, pick a single aspect of lighting to study, such as color, brightness or type of light source. Find reference works that describe earlier research about how that aspect of lighting affects peoples' moods. Use the information you find to form an educated guess about a pattern you might find. Express your hypothesis in a statement that expresses the result you expect to find.
Controlling for Variables
Design experimental controls to make sure that the effects you discover are caused by your experiment, not by other causes. A subject's mood may be affected by factors like recent variations in diet, exercise, sleep, relationships and stress levels. One way to help account for these unpredictable factors is to measure each test subject's mood at the beginning and end of each session. This will allow you to report your results in terms of changes in mood caused by the lighting.
Measuring Mood
Measuring moods accurately will require careful experimental design. One approach is to use a questionnaire in which your test subjects report their moods directly. For example, you can ask each subject to rate on a scale of 1 to 10 how accurately different adjectives describe his mood, using adjectives like happy, sad, angry, apathetic and calm. Another approach is to use questions that will allow you to infer the subject's mood, such as "Do you feel ready to work?" or "Would you enjoy being around people right now?"
Presenting Your Results
When preparing to present your results at the science fair, begin by determining whether or not your results support your original hypothesis. Create a display that explains your experimental method, how you controlled variables and what results you found. If you measured test subjects' moods using numerical indicators, such as a 1-to-10 rating, you can create graphs that visually represent the patterns your experiment found. A few physical objects, such as the lights you used during the experiment, can give viewers a stronger sense of connection to your project.