Soda Senses

 

 

Problem:

We would like to determine if sight has any impact on taste.

Hypothesis:

Sight does affect your taste.

Materials:

• Sprite soda
• Yellow and red food coloring
• Dixie cups
• Straws
• Five middle school students

Variables:

CV: Sprite, order of cups, amount of soda in the cups, the way the test subjects drank the soda,

IV:   Food coloring

DV: Selections

Uncontrolled Variables: The amount the person drank from each cup varied, and was not measured.

Procedure:

First, to prepare for the experiment, we poured an equal amount of Sprite into five different cups, and added different mixtures of red and yellow dye in each cup to make dark and light shades of orange. In the first cup there was one drop of yellow dye. In the second cup were two drops of yellow dye, resulting in a darker color. In the third cup, there were three drops of yellow dye. In the fourth was three yellow drops and a half drop of red, and in the fifth was three drops of yellow and one drop of red. We lined up the cups from light to dark, so our test subjects would clearly be able to see the color difference.

After the preparation was over, we had five students come over one by one. They were each told to take a straw and take small sips of liquid from each of the five cups, in any order. After they drank, they would tell us in which cup they found the liquid most flavorful.

 

Observation:

The first person who we tested sipped the sodas from lightest to darkest. After tasting each one in turn, they decided that the fourth cup was the most flavorful. They were hesitant on the matter, however, and said that they were stuck between the fourth and fifth cup which were the two darker ones. The second test subject tried the soda in each cup in a similar fashion, and stated that the darkest cup had the most flavor. The third, fourth and fifth person agreed with the second. The overall results stated that four of the five thought the darkest cup had the most flavor, and the other said that the second darkest cup had the most  taste. All of them tasted the cups from lightest to darkest.

What was interesting was the fact some test subjects commented that the drink inside the last few cups holding the darker orange Sprite was actually a different soda, although they were all Sprite, only differed by the fact that the shade of color.

Conclusion:

While our experiment did seem to be a success, there are a few unknowns about the test. What if we had made the subjects taste the sodas in a completely random order? What if we had them taste the sodas in backwards order? These could have had an effect on our test. Perhaps the only reason the last cups were chosen, could be due to the fact that they were the last cups. There is a chance that the more you tasted the soda, the stronger the flavor became, and the last cups came to be the most flavorful. These unknowns should have been tested.

As a result of this experiment, we have found that your eyes can trick your taste buds. This is proved by the observation that four out of five test subjects chose the darkest colored Sprite, and the one who didn’t still chose the second darkest. The commentary is just extra evidence as to how much our own brain can fool itself. So, our conclusion is that, yes, sight does impact our taste.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=experts-how-does-sight-smell-affect-taste