CLARE: So can I talk through a possible procedure for the experiment where mice are given a sugar supplement?
JAKE: Sure. I did a similar experiment in college actually.
CLARE: Great. So how many mice would I need?
JAKE: I’d say about 12. And all young ones, not a mixture of old and young.
CLARE: OK. And I’d need two groups of equal sizes, so six in each group. And how would I tell them apart? I suppose I could put some sort of tag on one group… or just mark them in some way?
JAKE: You could use food colouring, that wouldn’t hurt them.
CLARE: Perfect. Then each group would go into a separate cage, and one group, let’s call them group A, would be the control group. So they’d just have ordinary mouse food. I suppose you can buy that?
JAKE: Yes, it comes in dry pellets.
CLARE: And the other group would have the same as the first group, but they’d also have the extra sugar.
JAKE: Would you just give them straight sugar?
CLARE: I might be better to give them something like cereal with it.
JAKE: Hmm. Then you’d need to weigh the mice, I should think once a week. And you’d need an electronic balance.
CLARE: But we can’t hold them on the balance, or it’d affect the reading.
JAKE: Exactly. So you need something called a weighing chamber to stop the mice from running away. It sounds complicated, but actually you can just use a plastic box with holes in the top.
CLARE: OK. So once we’ve measured the weight gain of each mouse we can work out the average for each group, as well as the standard deviation. And then see where we go from there. That sounds cool, I think the students will enjoy it.
JAKE: Yes. One thing…
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