Article #5

Science Fair: A Glimpse

This is a small portion of a science fair project made by three Central High School students for the Central Science Fair.

Since humans have been around, they have craved entertainment. Anything from fiddling with a stick or kicking something, humans like to be entertained. In recent years, one of the most popular methods of entertainment has been video games. The games we know today originated from Pong, a simple “tennis” game created in 1972. Since then, video games have expanded to cater to all people of all ages. While there are many games that have to do with simple tasks, there are others that can tell an intricate story, provoke emotion, and make players question what they know. Well, that's what they are supposed to do. We wanted to see how game genre affected blood pressure and pulse.

I believe if we let the players play each game for 20 minutes and compared their blood pressure and pulse after to their resting blood pressure and pulse, the greatest change would have occurred in the horror genre (Slender). I believe this because people tend to have intense reactions to frightening things. The saying “scared to death” does have truth in it. Having a weak heart and experiencing something scary could possibly kill you.

All of the games definitely changed the players' blood pressures. I reject my hypothesis because the data suggests the greatest change of blood pressure happened during Scribblenauts (puzzle) and not Slender (Horror) as we had hypothesis.