slaves of the middle passage Essay Example

slaves of the middle passage Essay Example slaves of the middle passage Essay slaves of the middle passage Essay et al. , 2006a. Hemispheres, Neuroscience for Kids [accessed June 7, 2007] http://faculty. washington. edu/chudler/ split. tml. Chudler, E. H. , et al. , 2006b. Sidedness, Neuroscience for Kids [accessed June 7, 2007] http://faculty. washington. edu/chudler/rightl. html. This project is based on an entry to the 2007 California State Science Fair: Hines, K. K. nd R. S. Thurman, 2007. Ballin: The Effect of Hand and Eye Dominance on a Subjects Free Throw Percentage, California State Science Fair Abstract [accessed June 7, 2007] http:// www. usc. edu/CSSF/History/2007/ProJects/S1106. pdf. This website has descriptions and calculators for several statistical tests, including the Students t-test that you can use in this project: Kirkman, T. date unknown. Students t-Tests, Department of Physics, College of St. Benedict St. Johns University [accessed June 7, 2007]http:// www. physics. csbs]u. edu/stats/t-test. html. Materials and Equipment To do this experiment you will need the following materials and equipment: 50-100 volunteers to take hand and eye dominance tests and then shoot free throws; notes: The more subjects you can test, the more reliable your results will be For more information, see the Science Buddies resource, How Many Participants Do I Need? Basketball Basketball court Hand dominance surveys Lab notebook Variations For a more basic experiment on determining right side/left side dominance in a sample population, see the Science Buddies project Are You Left or Right Sided? In this experiment, your hypothesis might have been that, when shooting free throws, the ball would (at least partially) block the dominant eye for shooters with uncrossed hand and eye dominances. Therefore, shooters with crossed hand and eye dominances might be expected to have an advantage. Can you think of a way to measure how much the ball blocks the vision of the dominant eye for each shooter? Can you incorporate this additional data into your analysis? Another approach to this project would be to use actual freethrow shooting statistics for real basketball teams. The trick is that you will need to be able to test (or survey) each player to find out their dominant hand and dominant eye. As in the experiment described above, it would be best to have at least 50-100 participants in your study, so youll need to test (or survey) a lot of players. Each player you include in your study will also need to have a significant number of freethrow attempts over the course of the season, so that you know the freethrow shooting percentage is reliable. What do you think the ffect of crossed hand/eye dominance would be in other sports, e. g. hitting a baseball, archery, target rifle shooting, soccer, or golf? Design an experiment to test your hypothesis. 1. Do your background research so that you are knowledgeable about the terms, concepts, and questions, above. 2. Youll need to recruit 50-100 volunteers for this project. Ideally all of your volunteers will be approximately the same age, and will have roughly the same amount of experience shooting free throws . 3. The simplest way to collect the data for this experiment is to use a separate data sheet for each participant. On each data sheet you will need to collect the following information: a. Name b. Age c. Gender d. Hand dominance e. Eye dominance f. Number of years playing basketball g. Free throw percentage 4. To determine hand dominance, ask or observe: a. Which hand does your subject use for writing? Oust ask your subject to write his or her name. ) b. Which hand does your subject use to throw a ball. Give a ball to your subject and ask him or her to throw it to you. c. Which hand does your subject use to shoot baskets? (Generally when shooting, one hand cradles the ball, and the other hand launches the ball toward the basket. The hand providing the driving force to the ball is the shooting hand. ) d. You could also simply ask each subject if they are right-handed, left-handed or mixed (ask for examples of what they do with each hand). You may want to analyze the data from subjects with mixed hand dominance separately (but you may need a large group of test subjects to get significant results). 5. To determine eye dominance, have the subject do the following (Archeryweb. org, date unknown): a. Extend both hands to arms length in front of you, and put your hands together to make a small triangle between your thumbs and the first knuckle n each hand (see Figure 1 below). The triangle should be roughly 2-3 cm on each side. Figure 1 . The illustration above shows how to make a sighting triangle with your hands to determine which of your eyes is dominant. (Image from Archeryweb. org, date unknown) b. With both eyes open, look through the triangle and center something (e. g. , a doorknob) in the triangle. c. Close your left eye. If the object remains in view, you are right eye dominant. If your hands appear to move off the object and move to the left, then you are left eye dominant. d. To validate the first est, look through the triangle and center the object again with both eyes open. e. Close your right eye. If the object remains in view, you are left eye dominant. If your hands appear to move off the object and move to the right, then you are right eye dominant. f. An alternative method is to assume the same position with your hands, and center the triangle around the object with both eyes open. Now, slowly bring your hands toward your face while continuing to look at the object with both eyes open. When your hands touch your face, the triangle opening should be in front of your dominant eye. g. Repeat the above tests a number of times to satisfy yourself that you are sure which eye is your dominant eye. . Have the subject shoot at least shots). Determine the shooting percentage for each subject: shooting % = 100 * number of shots made / number of shots taken. 7. For each subject, determine whether they have crossed or uncrossed hand and eye dominances. a. Crossed hand and eye dominances would be: left hand/right eye or right hand/left eye. Uncrossed hand and eye dominances would be: le ft hand/left eye or right hand/right eye. 8. Calculate the average shooting percentage for the participants with uncrossed hand nd eye dominances. 9. Calculate the average shooting percentage for the participants with crossed hand and eye dominances. 10. More advanced students should also calculate the standard deviation of the shooting percentage for each group. 11. Make a bar graph to show the average shooting percentage for both groups. Is there any difference between the two groups? 12. More advanced students should also calculate whether any difference found is statistically significant. For example, you could use a t-test to see if any difference between the mean shooting percentage of the two groups is significant (Kirkman, date unknown).