Fast Reactions

Problem

Do gamers have a faster reaction than others?

Hypothesis

I believe that gamers will have a faster reaction than the other two categories of neither or athlete.

Procedure

• 1. First take a yard stick and put it up above where the subjects thumb is.

  2. Hold the yard stick at the top and then randomly drop it.

  3. Do this three times, while recording it down.

  4. Once the three tests are down find the average.

  5. Add that average with the category it goes into.

  6. Then continue doing the same thing until all the data has been collected.

  7. Make sure to find the average of each category.

  8. When all the averages are totaled up, compar to see which category had the fastest reactions.

Conclusion

In conclusion, the winning category was the athletes! To my surprise the athletes had the fastest reaction. They were faster than gamers and the neither category with the average of 3.5 inches. Gamers had 6.68 inches. The slowest of the group was neither with 8.65 inches.

Abstract

For my science fair project, I wanted to see if people who play video games have quicker reactions than people who don’t play video games. I feel like video gamers will have quicker reactions since the games they play often require the player to react quickly in very highly stimulated scenarios. Video gamers must have quick eye-hand coordination to be able to successfully navigate the controller. My hypothesis is that a gamer will have quicker reaction times when compared to an athlete or someone who is neither gamer nor athlete. So let’s see if gaming is beneficial to a person’s reaction speed.

I tested eight students and myself to determine which group has the fastest reaction. Everyone that I tested was sitting down on a chair with their arm balanced on the side of the table and their hand was opened ready to grab the stick. I held the yard stick upright directly next to their thumb. I randomly dropped the stick for them to grab. I wrote down where the bottom of their hand was on the yardstick. I tested each person four times which included one practice drop and three real drops. When dropping the yard stick I had my hand at the very top, and I did this so it was equal every time.

Since there are three different groups, I tested 3 people for each group. I am a gamer so my data for my turn was put into the gamer category. In the end my average was 3.3 in. As for the two other students that were tested in the gamer category, their average’s were 12.6 in, and the other was 4.16. So the average for the gamer category was 6.68 in. For the category of “neither” the averages of their tests were, 12.5 in, 7.3 in, and 6.16 in. Then for the total average for the Neither category was 8.65 in. And finally for the category Athlete the three averages were, 5.16 in, 3.6 in, 1.3 in. The total average of the Athlete category was 3.35 in.

So the fastest reaction group was… Athlete! To my surprise the athlete’s had the fastest reaction. With the average of 3.35 in, this showed that they beat the gaming average and the neither average. So first place goes to Athlete. Second place goes to Gamer. And third place goes to the Neither category. My guess as to how the athletes won is that they always have to be on guard and be ready for anything. A way I could improve this experiment would be by using centimeters, it most likely would have been easier to test with centimeters instead of inches.

Data:

Graph: