You will need:
- 10 glasses of water
- Sugar
- Spoon
- Food colour
- Timer/stopwatch
- Pen and paper
- Volunteers
Befool a few friends by tricking their minds. This is not only a fun experiment but a proven scientific study.
INSTRUCTIONS
- Take your friends out to a park where there is enough space to run.
- Make each one of them run 100 metres, and tell them that you will be timing them.
- It is not a race, so time them individually.
- Once you have timed them, note it down and tell them that you will continue the experiment tomorrow.
- Next day, without your friend’s knowledge prepare 10 glasses of water. Leave 5 glasses plain, and in the remaining 5 glasses add a few drops of food colour and 1 spoon of sugar till it dissolves.
- When your friends arrive, divide them into 2 groups. Explain to them that you want to check the success of a new sports drink.
- State that the sports drink increases the speed of a person by at least a few seconds.
- Give one group the ‘sports drink’, and the other group plain water, so as to properly test the drink.
- Make each of your friends run 100 metres again, while you time them.
RESULT
The placebo effect is not a trick but a proven fact. The group that was given ‘sports drink’ would have run faster than their timing the day prior. There wasn’t any change in the control group. By convincing the mind that the body has been given something to make it better or faster, the mind believes it, affecting the body.
