Re: This isn't physics, but this is a summary of my last Science Fair project

[Lisa Gardner <iamlisa@TAMPABAY.RR.COM>]

> I would be very pleased if you could discuss technical
> topics of interest
>  to you - I suspect I might find them easier to follow than
> some of the
> grown up matters that come to our attention on this list.
>
> Sincerely
>
> Brian
>
>
> brian whatcott <inet@intellisys.net>
> Altus OK

Dear Mr. Brian Whatcott

I realize that this isn't physics and I will probably catch some flak
for being off topic for this list, but I don't have time at this
moment to write up something else. This is just a summary of my
science fair project from this last April.

Have fun and I again apologize for being off topic. (I won't do it
again)

Lisa Gardner (age 9)



        The title of my project is A-maze-ing Roaches. It started out as
Roach Runner, then ‘Run For The Roaches’, and for a while, I thought
it would be good as ‘U Bug Me’, but I finally settled on the
misspelling of amazing to make my point and got ‘Amazeing Roaches’.

        The purpose of my project is to find out if roaches can learn to run
a maze.

        My hypothesis is that I think roaches can learn a maze. After I
finished my individual science project, two years ago (1998), I
wondered, since fish could learn a maze why not cockroaches? They are
so difficult to catch on the floor, and they seem to know where they
are going, to get out of danger, that maybe they actually knew where
they were going.


        I had also read that roaches often gather in certain areas, so I
figured that they would have to know how to get back to it, unless
they left a scent trail. As I continued to do some research on the
Internet I also found a reference that a University raced them. So I
got excited that there might really be a chance that they could learn
a maze.  Since I had a maze already, from my previous experiment, I
decided to use it. In retrospect, I should have constructed a new one
out of white plastic, so I could see the cockroaches easier, and that
they wouldn’t think they were safe and try to hide in a dark corner
and not move.

         Over the two years since my fish/mouse experiment, my maze had
gotten broken, but with a little effort I re-glued the parts of the
maze that had become disassembled. The next day I glued a piece of
screen over the top of the maze, so the roaches wouldn’t be able to
escape once they were inside the maze. If I were to do this experiment
again I would just use a normal thickness piece of clear Plexiglas and
lay it over the top instead of gluing screen down. That way I could
clean the floor of the maze after each roach had run, so there wouldn’
t be any chance that the roaches were following a scent trail.
Although, I think that the whole maze soon got covered with scent, and
wouldn’t have made any difference.

         My coach (Mom) Dremeled out a rectangular hole in the side of the
plastic, clam, catch container so it would line up with the exit in
the maze.

        From the information I had read, it said that cockroaches didn’t
bite, making me happier to try to handle them. (I still don’t know why
they would think my hand wasn’t food though, and take a nibble??? At
least one of their defenses wasn’t their mouth.)

        Now, what about getting Roaches? I didn’t know where to buy them, and
my parents weren’t keen on spending money on an insect pest, so my
coach suggested I look in the stack of pots in the back yard.  Now, I
had never touched a roach before, so I was down right nervous. The
first roach I caught, was found in the garage, by my Dad. My coach and
I dropped a container over it. Slipping a piece of paper under the
container I moved it to one of the plastic gallon jars that I would be
using. During the next two days I captured 20 roaches, most in the
stacked flowerpots in my back yard. The last roach I found had just
sashayed in from the lanai when I dropped a container over it. My Dad
didn’t want them in the house after the first night. He said he could
smell them a room away. I knew that roaches had a bug smell, but, oh
my, PU!!!, I didn’t realize how bad they really smelled, especially
the Orientals, and the Florida Skunk Roach.

        Since some of the insects were identical looking to me; I took 9
different colors of fingernail polish and put dots and stripes on
their backs to tell them apart. (My coach got very sick of the smell
of finger nail polish and roach odor!!!) Luckily, all the winged ones
were different in size or species, so I didn’t have to mark them,
since I planned to release them when I was done with this experiment.
I counted the number of plates on the abdomen (seven for females and 9
of males), and checked other characteristics to determine the gender;
then recorded it along with their color code in my logbook.
        The first thing after I found all the materials I would need for the
experiment I selected the first 5 roaches to be run, numbers 1, 2,
6,10, and 11.  I moved them to the second container after I caught
them. The roaches were very wily and spry, and I was slightly scared
of handling them. The vinyl gloves made me feel more comfortable, but
the roaches didn’t want to be handled, so they were hard to catch.  I
used a skewer to help maneuver them sometimes.  The remaining roaches
are left in the original holding container with food and water, and a
screen cover over the top of the jar, held with a rubber band.

        I set the maze up in our dining room, and I lined up the long side of
the maze along a north south magnetic line. Just in case they used the
earth’s magnetic field for knowing where they are.

        Trying to run our first roach went horribly. Roach, # 1, a large
American, escaped and nearly vanished into an area behind a book case.
Dad put his foot down (luckily not on the roach), and said “NO MORE
ROACHES IN THE HOUSE!” I captured it, and put it back in the holding
container. I then had to figure out where I was going to set up the
maze again. My coach suggested the garage, since it can be
air-conditioned, and can stay a constant temperature if we leave a
certain door open. After the escape, I was afraid to try again to get
a roach into the maze. My coach then offered to catch and put the
roaches into the maze for me. It was very difficult for her to not let
them escape. If I were to do this experiment again I would buy enough
plastic catch containers so each roach that is being run could have
one. That way I wouldn’t have to handle them at all.
        The next problem was because the plastic was black and with the
screen over the maze the roach didn’t want to move. I tried to scare
it into moving by vibrating the box, and that didn’t work. Then I
tried to blow a puff of air from a small pump and that didn’t work. I
then poked 9 holes in the screen covering so I could stick a 10
 bamboo skewer into the maze. I then very carefully tapped the roach
right on the tip of its abdomen to scare it. It worked. I counted how
many times I had to touch it, always being careful, to only tap it in
the same place. I didn’t touch it to make it change directions, only
to make it keep moving. If the roach stopped I counted one thousand,
two thousand and then tapped it to scare it to move. It didn’t matter
which direction it was facing.

        My coach caught all the roaches the first day, but by the second day
they weren’t as wild and I caught a couple. It kept on improving with
each run. I wasn’t too successful with the roaches that could fly.

        I ran the 5 roaches twenty times over the next five days. I recorded
the roach’s time and number of taps it took to keep them moving to
complete the maze. I don’t list the number of taps on the show board,
since I feel that they were needed only because the maze was black. If
I had been able to get more screen material I would have removed it
and put white on the floor of the maze, but I didn’t have any other
source. Also, all the roaches by the second or third day had learned
to keep moving, so I didn’t need to tap them.

        Someone asked me why I released the run cockroaches instead of
killing them, since they are pests. I didn’t have it in my heart to
kill them, and since they were from the wild anyway I wanted to
release them. My parents also felt that since there are so many
insects in the world that releasing these after they had helped me
with my experiment was appropriate. They felt that as long as the
insects stay out of the house they have no strong need to kill them.
(I would not be allowed to release purchased cockroaches into the
wild.)

        I selected five more roaches, three more times. The last batch
consisted of what was to turnout to be the most talented roaches.  We
had mostly one species in that run, and they were the Wood Roaches. I
finally released all the roaches but one little brown banded, that I
fell in love with. I made a little habitat for it in a bug box.

        After all the data was collected my parents helped me set up an Excel
spread sheet and I entered the data. I then had Excel plot the data
and add a trend line to the graph.

        After looking at the graphed data I concluded that my original
hypothesis was correct, that a cockroach could learn a simple maze.
Although, the Wood, Brown banded, and Australian seem to be the
fastest. I did notice that at the beginning of each day, at the 5:00
am run the roaches were slower than the last run of the previous day.
This might be because this is when they might normally not be active,
or maybe they didn’t remember the maze as well after the longer break
of 11 hours, but if this were the reason then the 8 hour time between
the 7am and the 3 pm time might show a slower or at least the same
time.   I could not say from my data.

        This was a fun and interesting experiment. I highly recommend it to
people that like insects. Before this and my last science fair project
I never really thought about how smart some of the small wild
creatures could be.