Re: Can I test Different Drugs on Daphnias?

Greetings.

Yours is a good question, and it shows that you want to go "beyond" what is given to you. I congratulate you on that.

Now to your question: yes, you certainly can test things other than what the kit contains. I suspect, with the list of things you presented, that your kit comes with a set of powders that you mix up in water and apply to the plants at various times. You can do the same type of thing with the different types of pain relievers you mentioned.

A couple things to think about as you plan your experiment:

• It's important to note that not all of those drugs you mentioned are aspirin, which means a particular type of drug (acetylsalicylic acid). Some of the drugs above are acetaminophen and others are ibuprofen. That is something for which you must control in your experiment. You can learn a little more about the differences in this article.
• You have to come up with some way to standardize the dose that you give them. Take a look at how the kit does it for what they have done. Some ideas would be to use 1 dose in a set amount of liquid, a set weight per amount of liquid, a set amount of the active ingredient (usually listed on the label) per amount of liquid. Then you have to be sure that you give the equivalent test amounts to the plants.
• Another option would be to do what we call a "concentration curve"; and give differing amounts of the same substance (from a low concentration to a high one) and see what that does. You could do it for anything that has a reaction in the second example.
• Remember, you can only change 1 variable at a time!