Story originally printed in the Vernon Broadcaster or online at www.vernonbroadcaster.com
Published - Friday, April 18, 2008
Water torture project draws attention at annual expo
Luke Kleiber’s project was the talk Wednesday of the annual Science and Math Expo at the La Crosse Center.
The 13-year-old Viroqua Middle School eighth-grader wanted to see whether Chinese water torture — steadily dripping water onto a person’s forehead — worked. He had seen a television show he said dismissed it as a myth.
He didn’t really want to torture anybody, Kleiber explained, and his four subjects knew they would not be tortured.
But what he found was their bodies responded as if they were being tortured, Kleiber said.
His four subjects — two boys and two girls — lay on gurneys while an IV bag on a pole dripped water on their foreheads every two seconds.
He measured the subjects’ heart and breathing rates, which indicated they were afraid and anxious. Kleiber also had ambulance personnel on standby, and the subjects could stop at anytime.
“They knew the water was coming, but they still felt the psychological effects,” Kleiber said.
 657 middle school students from 16 area schools and 107 volunteer judges participate in the 2008 Science and Math Expo 2008 Wednesday at the La Crosse Center. PETER THOMSON photo |
He said water torture is cruel and inhumane, but his project showed it was 95 percent to 100 percent effective in producing the fear response.
The two girls, incidentally, did better than the two boys in the “torture” experiment, Kleiber said.
Kleiber was among more than 650 middle school students from the Coulee Region displaying projects at the 17th annual Gundersen Lutheran Medical Foundation event.
Three other Viroqua Middle School students — Glenn Kelley McCabe, Danielle Vold and Michelle Kent — wanted to know whether the girls in their seventh-grade class had better memory skills than the boys. They suspected so.
The subjects were shown 10 pictures and then asked to recall certain details. The girls won by a landslide.
“We found out our seventh-grade boys are not focused and easily distracted,” McCabe said.
Carleigh Klipp, 12, of Onalaska Middle School, tested reaction time among various age groups by dropping a ruler in front of them. She found what she predicted — “I just thought older people would have a faster reaction time due to experience,” Klipp said — though the 21 to 30 age group had the fastest reactions.
Lincoln Middle School eighth-graders Anna Whiteway and Lera Zamaraeva wanted to know whether certain types of music would influence heart rate. They didn’t see much difference when subjects listened to death metal, classical and R&B, but metal music increased the heart rate the most.
Science projects teach students to develop and test their own ideas, “rather than just the science that teachers are telling them is important,” said Mark Vale, a Logan Middle School seventh-grade science teacher.
“They are able to explore a little bit on their own,” he said.
All stories copyright 2006 Vernon Broadcaster and other attributed sources.