Dhahran Ahliyya Schools Sience Fair

My name is Hatem Alkaka, I'm in Dhahran Ahliyy Schools MYP 2, and this is my science fair project.

My problem or purpose for my science fair project is for me to know if the dominant hand is more or less sensitive than the non-dominant hand. My question is: Does the dominancy of your hand affect its sensitivity?

My hypothesis for this experiment is if you put both hands into ice-cold water, then your non-dominant hand will come out first due to the coldness; Exp: If you are right-handed then you will pull out your left hand first. This is because of your non-dominant hand isn't used as much so it doesn't have much of a tolerance to pain and exhaustion.

Independent variable: The dominancy of the hand

Dependent variable: The amount of time each hand can spend in the cold water/ which hand is pulled out first.

Controlled variable: The temperature of the water/ the age range/ the size of the bowl.

In human biology, handiness is a superior, quicker, or more reliable performance or individual preference for using a hand, known as the dominant hand. The hand which is unfit, less competent or less favored is called the non-dominant. Right-handedness is the most common type, and approximately 90 percent of the world's population is estimated to be right-handed. Handedness is also characterized by the hand that people write, eat, ore plat with. And rarely there are people that are mix-handed ( or ambidextrous) that are capable of using both hands efficiently.

• Timer
• 5 people ( 2 left-handed/ 2 right-handed/ 1 fairly ambidextrous)
• Water
• Enough ice to suit the water
• A bowl

1. Put enough ice into a bowl of water to make it extremely cold.
2. Let one person put both his/her hands into the bowl
3. Record when (s)he takes out each hand.
4. Repeat steps 2 and 3 for all the people.

Right-handed:

• Left hand out first and they were 6 seconds apart (23sec-29sec)
• Left hand out first and they were 10 seconds apart (20sec-30sec)

Left-handed:

• Right hand out first and they were 4 seconds apart (18sec-20sec)
• Right hand out first and they were 7 seconds apart ( 25sec-32sec)

Ambedextourus

• Right hand out first but they were 2 seconds apart (25sec-27sec)

• All the left-handed people pulled their right hand out first and vise-versa
• The average gap between the two hands for right-handed people was 8 seconds.
• The average gap between the two hands for left-handed people was 5.5 seconds.

• The average time every person in the experiment could handle is 24.9 seconds

The results I got after conducting this experiment is that every person that I did form different ages all pulled out their non-dominant hand out of the water first because they could not handle it. And the only ambidextrous person pulled out his right hand first.

In conclusion, my hypothesis was correct in which I managed to determine whether or not your dominant hand is less sensitive to the cold temperatures than your other hand. After analyzing my data I realized that every person (excluding the ambidextrous person) pulled out their non-dominant hand. And since the ambidextrous person pulled out his right hand. That could mean that he was originally left-handed.

Left-handedness/ right-handedness can be an important part of future studies to understand more about the human body. Soon, if we dive deeper into the knowledge of what makes us left-handed an right-handed, we could be able to connect it to brain function, and performance abilities.

I have used self-management skills during the whole process of this experiment. This is because I have organized a timeline for my experiment dates and followed it accordingly. I planned everything Ill need for the experiment beforehand. And I made sure that I finish it all on time.