The Caffeine Craze

Overview

Objectives/Goals My objective was to learn if caffeine consumption has an effect on a person's typing speed and accuracy. Methods/Materials Materials used in my project include 7 2-liter bottles of Diet Coke, 7 2-liter bottles of Caffeine-Free Diet Coke, 50 16-oz. disposable plastic cups, computers and keyboards, 10 floppy disks, 2 sample pages for typing tests, and a stopwatch. For the testing of my subjects, I first gave all 50 subjects a preliminary, 2-minute typing test. 25 test subjects then drank 16-oz. of Diet Coke (experimental group), and 25 other test subjects drank 16-oz. of Caffeine-Free Diet Coke (control group). Each subject was told to consume the beverage in less than 3 minutes, and they then waited approximately 30 minutes. After the waiting period, test subjects were given another 2-minute typing test (of a different page so as not to learn the selection), and analysis of these results then followed. Results The average increase in words per minute of the control group was 2.28 words per minute, whereas the average increase in the experimental group was 9.2 words per minute. On average the experimental group increased their speed by 6.92 words per minute more than the control group. The accuracy of the experimental group decreased by 1.33% more than that of the control group, but these numbers do not provide definitive results. These results pertain to my objective in supporting half my hypothesis that caffeine consumption does have an effect on a person's typing speed, but does not support the other half of my hypothesis that caffeine consumption has an effect on a person's typing accuracy. Conclusions/Discussion The consumption of caffeine moderately increases the number of words per minutes typed, but has a minimal effect on the number of errors typed. This conclusion supports half of my hypothesis. This information expands our knowledge of the category subject in that it indicates that caffeine can be used effectively as an aid to increase typing productivity.

Competition history

• CSEF 2003 Pharmacology/ Toxicology · Entry S1406

Resources

• CSEF project summary ↗

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