It's pitch-black in freshman Leila Sufi's living room. Heart pounding, Sufi's eyes are glued to the horror movie on her TV as eerie music fills the air.
Then, in a moment of realization, she hits the mute button.
The scene instantly became much less terrifying. Sufi realized it was the music making the movie terrifying and her heart race. Sufi’s moment of inspiration would kickstart a three-month long science project exploring how music impacts emotions and heartbeats.
Over the course of her project, Sufi transformed her late-night epiphany into a detailed investigation for the Greater Kansas City Science and Engineering Fair, focusing on one question: What aspects of music influence heart rate the most?
Sufi designed an experiment that explored three main parts of music: beats per minute, tone and whether a song had lyrics or was just instrumental. She recruited 30 classmates and friends to listen to six carefully chosen songs, grouped into three sets, each focused on the three variables.
Sufi played “Golden” by Harry Styles, “Arcade” by Duncan Laurence, “Summertime Sadness" by Lana Del Rey, “Golden” by Harry Styles (instrumental version), “Easy on Me” by Adele and “I Feel Like Dancing” by Jason Mraz.
Using pulse oximeters clipped to the participants' fingers, Sufi tracked heart rate changes while the songs played.
https://www.thinglink.com/view/scene/2102598702366458724
Since she was working with human test subjects, she had to get her project approved by a Scientific Review Committee, school staff and a qualified scientist.
“It took me almost all of February just to get everything approved,” Sufi said. “There are a lot of steps to make sure everyone is safe.”
Once her project got approved, Sufi spent March running her experiment and balancing data collection with schoolwork while coordinating with her volunteers.
After digging into the data, she found that none of the different musical elements had a monumental impact. Still, the trends were interesting, according to Sufi: BPM seemed to affect heart rates the most, followed by whether the song had lyrics or not. The emotional tone mattered the least when comparing happy and sad songs.
Her findings suggest that while music does affect our bodies, not every aspect has the same impact. Sometimes, the heart rate was impacted more by how intense the emotions are rather than if a song is cheerful or gloomy. For example, an emotional song has a bigger effect than a dull or emotionless one.
Sufi placed in the gold category at the awards ceremony on April 12.
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