Effectiveness of Airbags in Preventing Fatalities in Vehicle Crashes
Airbags, a vehicle safety feature required to be installed in vehicles manufactured after
1999, have an effect on reducing the number of fatalities caused by vehicle crashes. This project
shows the level of the effectiveness of airbags. The number of fatalities is dependent on the
number of years since frontal airbags were made mandatory. The number of fatalities from five
years before and five years after the airbags requirement demonstrates the effectiveness of
airbags. The number of fatalities caused by vehicle crashes has been decreasing by
approximately seven deaths per year. The percentage of fatalities due to vehicle crashes had
decreased by 0.02 percent since frontal airbags were made mandatory by the government. The
hypothesis that the number of fatalities caused by vehicle crashes will decrease after 1999, when
airbags were made mandatory in vehicles, was supported by the data and a statistical t-test. The
t-test shows the difference in the number of crashes from the years before and after 1999 to be
significant. Further research could explore the effectiveness of seat belts, another vehicle safety
feature, and compare vehicle crash statistics before and after seat belts were made mandatory.
The Effect of Motor Oil on Daphnia magna
The purpose of this project was to model how motor oil impacts the organisms that live in
a lake. Whole effluent toxicity (WET) testing is used by regulatory agencies to determine how
clean an effluent must be before release to the environment. In a WET test, aquatic animals are
exposed to an effluent to determine if the effluent harms animals. Eight experiments using the
organism Daphnia magna were conducted varying the amount of motor oil. The number of live
Daphnia magna remaining after 24 and 48 hours was recorded. The hypothesis stated that any
motor oil would cause death. A graph of the data shows that motor oil has a LC50 of 3 ml/l.
This is the concentration at which 50% of the organisms die. This very low concentration
supports the hypothesis. The effects of pollutants on organisms are well documented in the
scientific literature. Great effort should be taken to avoid the leaking of motor oil into an aquatic
system.