Wednesday, December 7, 2011

Chewin' chewin' all day long chewin' chewin' chewin'



The lab we performed in class was quite tasty...or interesting, interesting yes.  We tested the amount of energy/power it takes the jaw to consume a variety of foods.  We did this by attaching several sensory cords or electrode tabs to our very cooperative test subject, Seth.  These cords ran to a probe of sorts that was connected to our lap top that recorded the energy being used.  Before we began testing we created a hypothesis.  Our hypothesis stated that we believed it would take more jaw power to chew harder foods than it would softer foods.  After we made our prediction we began the test.  Our test subject started with a softer food, a banana.  The computer recorded the results.  He then consumed a carrot, celery, gatorade, a marshmallow, and finally a pop tart.  After collecting the data we concluded that our hypothesis was actually incorrect.  The graph below shows that foods like the banana actually generated more energy when being eaten.  I personally find this rather strange that the softer the food the more energy created.  

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