Materials and Methods

The organisms used in this experiment were six standard laboratory mice (Mus musculus).  A maze was constructed using posterboard that was cut into pieces of varying size and glued together.  The maze was then transported to a laboratory setting to perform the experiment.  Once in the laboratory, the mice were fasted for a period of two hours prior to running the maze.  Two of the six mice obtained for the experiment were not used due to late stages of pregnancy.  Cheese was used as a positive reinforcement for finishing the maze.  The maze was placed on the lab floor and tapped down to prevent light from entering through cracks between the maze walls and floor.  The tail of each mouse was marked with a different color to be distinguished.  At every trial, each mouse ran through the maze before moving on to the next trial.  This process was repeated for ten trials.  At the beginning of a trial, the mouse was placed at the starting point of the maze and cheese was placed at the finish.  A stopwatch was used to record the time required for the mice to complete the maze.  Mice were cycled through the maze in the same order to ensure  resting time between trials.

            After recording the times of four different mice for ten trials, the data was entered into an Excel spreadsheet.  The data was used to generate line graphs depicting the learning preparedness of the mice.