Page 181 - Science Coursebook

Reference

Question
1 a What question was Frank Drake trying to answer?
b How did he try to answer it?
2 How has new technology helped the SETI project to collect and analyse
more data?
3 So far, the SETI project has not found signs of extra-terrestrial intelligence.
a Does this mean that we are the only intelligent creatures in the universe?
Explain your answer.
b Give at least two reasons why it might be difficult to detect intelligent

extra-terrestrial life.
4 Suggest an alternative way to look for alien life.

Question: Does fish oil improve exam performance?

In 2006, a county council (local government institution) in the United Kingdom
announced that they were going to run a trial to find out if taking tablets containing

fish oil could improve students’ performance in their GCSE exams.

This is what they did:

• They gave fish oil tablets to 3000 children in Year 11 (the start of the year in
which they would take their GCSE exams). The students were supposed to take
their tablets regularly.
• By the time the students took their exams, only 832 of them were still taking the
tablets on at least 80% of the times that they should.
• The researchers ‘matched’ 629 of these students against similar students out of

the original 3000 who had stopped taking their fish oil tablets. They did this by
finding students who went to the same school, were the same sex, had similar

marks in school and had a similar social background.

• They found that, on average, the student in each pair who had taken fish oil did
better than the one who had not.
The Activity on page 180 will help you to think about the design of this
investigation.

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