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Effects of Caffeine and Nicotine on Lumbriculus Variegatus Essay

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Effects of Caffeine and Nicotine on Lumbriculus variegatus
INTRODUCTION
An experiment was conducted to study and explore the circulatory system by exposing Lumbriculus variegatus, black worms, to household drugs. Lumbriculus variegatus was chosen as the experimental organism because of their transparent bodies and their simple physiology.
Their transparent bodies help the experimenters to easily see their pulse. Another reason for choosing this specific organism is their body structure—large surface area to size ratio. This feature allows the substances, such as the household drugs, to easily enter their body which then can affect their health.(1) The household drugs used in this experiment were decaffeinated coffee, tea, instant …show more content…

The dependent variable is pulsation rates of L. variegatus before and after they were in the treatments. The standardized variable of this experiment would be the temperature of the surroundings of the L. variegatus, the three pulsation rates taken for each worm before and after the treatments, and also the amount of time each worm was kept in their respective treatments. The level of treatment for this experiment would be ten because of the six different concentration treatments of caffeine and nicotine along with the four household drugs. The sample size of the experiment differed from some treatments to other. For the three different concentrations of caffeine and nicotine, the sample size was 18 black worms each. The sample size of the control treatment of week 1 was 6 black worms. 12 black worms were used for the control of week 2, decaffeinated coffee and instant coffee. 11 black worms were used for the tea treatment and 15 were used for the tobacco treatment. There were three replications of the pulsation rate readings per worm before and after the treatment. With all this information we were able to get the results we got. According to the results, the columns of caffeine in figure 1, of this experiment the hypothesis for caffeine is partially accepted. There is an increasing trend in the change of pulsation rates with increasing

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