Colleen sings, plays the recorder, and enjoys horseback riding English style. She helps out at the local food pantry and works with disabled children. In the future, she would like to become a photographer because she loves "nature and the beauty of the earth."
Colleen observed that "energy drinks" are widely marketed to young people as performance enhancers. However, little data support this. She noted that energy drinks often contain caffeine, whereas other sports drinks don't. Colleen hypothesized that teens consuming energy drinks will experience changes in heart rate, blood pressure, concentration, and sense of well-being, but not if they ingest other sports drinks.
Colleen recruited 13 girls and 8 boys, ages 13 to 15, for her study. After parental consent was given, the volunteers drank from an unmarked cup containing either an energy drink or a caffeine-free, low-calorie sports drink. For an hour after each drink, she conducted various tests on the volunteers. On another day, she gave each participant a different drink and repeated the tests. Colleen found significantly higher heart rate and systolic blood pressure in participants who ingested beverages with caffeine compared with their scores after receiving the caffeine-free drink. Memory tests using flash cards showed no difference. The volunteers were more jittery and out of sorts after the caffeine drinks.
