Pet Corner - 8 Mice, Mozart, & AD/DC

8 MICE, MOZART, & AC/DC

Resident Submission by Ethan Wright, age 14

There was a young girl named Ashley Bytheway who created an experiment for her school science fair. She bought 8 mice and put them in 2 containers, 4 in each. Then with a laptop and two speakers, she played hard rock AC/DC in one container, and classical music Mozart in the other. Right away she knew the rock mice hated their music.

Every night at 7:00 she would put them in a maze with food at the end of it. All the mice made it through the maze in 5 minutes the first time, but since she did it every night, she knew there would be a learning curve.

The science experiment was about what the difference between the two containers of mice would be. At the end of the month, the hard rock mice were able to complete the maze in a little over 3 minutes. The Mozart mice were able to complete it in just 16 seconds.

Next, Ashley put a cardboard tunnel between the two containers and put all the mice in the middle so they could choose which music they wanted. The next morning she found that all eight mice were in the Mozart container.

Psychologically, something about the hard rock music was naturally repellent to the mice. With this project, Ashley won the science fair, of course!

(Fun fact: classical music has increasingly gone down in popularity, but stores will still play it to repel loitering teenagers).