Rayden enjoys his membership in the Chess Club and the Science and Technology Club, because they constantly challenge him in news ways. He hopes someday to become a neurosurgeon "in order to help people to all extents possible."
Rayden's teacher, David Negrelli, is his science hero, because he "pushed me to my limit and opened the world of science to me."
Rayden, whose grandfather often smoked around him, worried about the effects of this involuntary smoking on his lungs. Determined to investigate the effects of involuntary smoking on children, Rayden developed an experiment that would test the effects of smoke on the expiatory flow (speed of air flow out of the lungs) in children. He hypothesized that smoke would cause a decrease in the peak expiatory flow (PEF).
The first step in Rayden's experiment was to choose suitable subjects. He used a survey to pick subjects that were exposed to involuntary smoking for a certain amount of time each day and under certain conditions. All subjects were in the same age, weight and height groups. Rayden also selected a control group of subjects who were not exposed to smoke. Rayden had subjects rest for 10 minutes before measuring their PEFs. The process was repeated three times, and an average was taken. The results proved Rayden's hypothesis that children of smokers have a lower PEF then children of nonsmokers.
