Bitter Taste Lab Report

Conclusion: The purpose of the lab was to characterize phenotypic variation for sensory perception of the bitter taste in a student population.The ability of students to taste different chemicals is controlled by the student’s genes. This means that because each student has different genes, each individual student will taste each chemical differently, or not at all. This explains why there is a lot of variation in the interpretations of the taste of each chemical. The tonic water tasted sweet to some students because they were unable to taste the quinine, and instead only tasted the sweetener that was added to the tonic water to mask the bitterness. The hypothesis of “If a group of students tries different chemicals, some students will taste the chemicals and some won’t” was supported by the results of the experiment, as with each chemical tested, there were some students who could taste the chemical and some who couldn't.
The data was all compiled into one big chart, so if the eight students could taste PTC, not taste thiourea, and taste sodium benzoate, then any potential link between those traits could never be established by this experiment, as all of the data that would have connected those traits would have been mixed in with other information from other students. To keep that from happening in future experiments, each student should mark what they tasted on independent charts, so as to allow the data to be interpreted more closely. There were some inconsistencies in the data. In the sodium benzoate testing, there were twenty two total tally marks on the chart stating whether or not each student could taste the