Arachnid experiment

Lisa Wood has been teaching the lesson about conducting ethical experiments and producing valid results for a decade.

This year marked the first and experiment involved a live animal in her classroom.

It was a tarantula.

Jay County High School seniors Kaleb Weaver and Kelly Strausburg designed their experiment to determine if arachnophobia has a significant effect on the body, not just the mind.

Their determination — it does.

“There was a significant increase in heart rate when people looked at a spider,” said Weaver. “So, arachnophobia is real.”

For the lesson in Wood’s biomedical class, students are free to develop their own experiment.

Weaver suggested bringing in a tarantula. Strausburg just happened to be his partner.

“He was like, ‘We should bring in a tarantula and test people’s heart rates for our experiment,’” she said. “And I said, ‘If you get a tarantula, sure, we can totally do that.’”

For the experiment, Weaver and Strausburg first recorded their subjects’ resting heart rates. Then, the subject was blindfolded. After allowing time to ensure that heart rates weren’t being impact by the blindfold, the subject’s hand was placed into a container with Grizzle the tarantula. Then the blindfold was removed, allowing the subject to see the predicament they were in.

“We basically just wanted to test people’s fight or flight instinct,” said Strausburg. “And what better way to do that than to put their hand in a  cage with a tarantula.”

The result showed that the fear is not just in the mind.

While some subjects showed no change in heart rate, there was an average increase of nearly 14 beats per minute. Two subjects had their heart rates jump by 30 beats per minute.

“It was interesting to see how much the outward appearance of how much they were freaking out correlated with their actual heart rate,” said Weaver. “We wanted to make sure the direct causation was the tarantula and not any of the other factors.”

Another duo tested the effects of “3D audio” on heart rates this year. In the past, experiments have involved tabasco sauce and regular Coca-Cola versus the caffeine-free variety.

Wood noted the importance of teaching students how to set up an experiment properly.

“Their whole goal is to learn how to set an experiment up and how to get valid results,” she said. “Every year we get an interesting (experiment).”

This year, the interesting experiment involved a bristly, eight-legged creature in her classroom.

“We had to, from scratch, design an experiment, collect the data, determine the data, do background research,” said Weaver. “It was really just an all from scratch experiment that took the years of what we learned in here … It was the culmination of four years of this kind of class.”