The effect of an Electric Current on the Feeding Habits of Ants

1. The effect of an Electric Current on the Feeding Habits of Ants Brett Quinn3rd Period Honor Biology Pietrangelo

2. Problem Statement – Will an electric current conducted on an ant from a copper wire stop the ant from crossing the wire and eating the food Hypothesis - If an ant walks across a wire with an electric current, then it will not eat the food on the other side of the wire

3. Terms and Concepts • Electrical Formulas • P = Power (watts), V = Voltage (volts), I = Current (amps), R = Resistance (ohms) • Volts = (R * I), (P/I) • Watts = (V * I) • Amps = (P/V), (V/R) • Ohms = (V/I) • Statistics Formula (R squared) - • Ant info • Carpenter Ant, Camponotuschromaiodes • Are poisonous • Use pincers for collecting food and buroughing • Mostly live in rotted wood in homes Ants mostly work together to collect food by sending a scout ant or ants that find food and then comes back to the nest to collect the worker ants that gather the food

4. Final Design Diagram Materials – Ammeter Household Syrup Electric Tape Paper to put food on Ping Pong Table Paper to pick up ants with Tube to set ants near wire Ants from www.antsalive.com Separate Container for Used ants Train Transformer Copper Wire

5. Procedure – 1.     Gather materials on ping pong table: syrup, paper, compass, container ofants, train transformer, copper wire, ammeter/voltmeter, electric tape, 2 x 4 wood blocks, and separate container for used ants 2.     Put one of the 2 pieces of paper in center of table 3.     Draw a 6 ring “bulls eye” in center of paper with the compass; the first ring being 1mm wide, and the 6th being 6mm wide 4.     Place copper wire in a circle, 8cm away from “bulls eye” at all sides 5.     Tape wire to table at 4 points with electric tape 6.     Plug in train transformer and attach (-) and (+) output wires to copper wire 7.     Turn on transformer and measure amp output with ammeter 8.     Turn train speedometer until ammeter reads 5 amps, then 10, 15, 20, and 25 for respective trials. 9.      Mark on train speedometer where each level occurs 10.   Take bottle of syrup and put a drop of syrup on the “bulls eye” big enough so that the outer edge of syrup reaches the 6th layer of the “bulls eye” 11.    Start control level of procedure by turning speedometer back to 0 12.    Take tube and point it to the food to direct the ants 13.    Carefully take 1 ant out of ant container, put it in the tube, and direct it to the paper 14.    After the ant has finished eating use the spare paper to pick up the ant and put the ant into the “used ants” container 15.   Record how many rings the drop of syrup has decreased to after the ant ate the syrup: if the ant did not eat any syrup because of the electric wire mark the result as zero (in logbook) 16.    Then fill up all 6 rings with syrup again and repeat process with 5ma, 10ma, 15ma, 20ma, and 25ma; 10 trials for each level 17. Record data in logbook 18. After the experiment is over let the ants go free! Then clean up supplies    

7. Photodocumentation Before

8. During

9. After

10. Statistical Analysis • The statistical formula used for this experiment was the R squared value formula. • R squared – correlation of data. • Example – If a 10 year old girl is 4’6”, an 15 year old is 5’0”, and a 20 year old is 5’6”, the data is 1.0 or 100% correlated because for every 5 years older a person is, they grow six inches. If the 15 year old girl was 5’1”, then the correlation would be .99 witch is almost exactly correlated but not 100%. • My experiment was 0.89, which is closely correlated but not as close as the sample experiment above. • Errors • I could not get a perfect read from my ammeter to divide my levels evenly. I ended up getting 0 ma, 4.32 ma, 10.02 ma, 14.47 ma, 19.89 ma, and 23.67 ma for my first few ants but it could have changed throughout my experiment. • Some of the ants didn’t even get to the wire because they didn’t get the scent of the food. • I could not get the copper wire to stay perfectly flat on the ping pong table surface and one of the ants almost went under the wire. • The transformer would sometimes shut itself off because there was too much power. • Some of the ants may not have even been scout ants. Most of them may have just been worker ants that build the ant hills and boroughs.

11. Conclusion • My conclusion based on my data is that the experiment could have had very promising results if there had not been as many errors • The ants did get effected by the electric current so If I had found a way to conduct the experiment more accurately. • If I had created a channel for the ants to crawl through to the food I would have been able to use all sixty ants for my results because they all would have actually touched the wire. • I also should have enclosed the whole experiment with a cover so that the scent of the food would stay in the experiment and the ants would be able to track it better • I wanted to find out in my project if there was a better way to keep ants and other pests out of my house. If a simple copper wire could keep all of the bugs out of peoples’ houses there may not even be a need for bug spray anymore.