Purpose: To discover if different coloured skittles have distinctive flavours to the human palette.

Hypothesis: Skittles have distinctive flavours but can not be differentiated without visual cues ie. colour.

2.5. Counter-Thesis: Skittles have distinctive flavours and can be detected without seeing their colour.

Materials: 1lb bag of skittles, 30 plastic easter eggs, blindfold, notepad, scissors, red pen, blue pen, science tongs

Procedure: Skittles will be separated by colour and placed into plastic easter eggs in groups of five(5) per egg. A folded piece of paper will have the colour of the skittles written in blue(blue) pen ink. The participants will be blindfolded so as not to see the colour of the skittles. After eating the skittles and making a colour guess, the guess will be written down in red(red) ink and placed inside the egg. Once all eggs have been consumed, they will be opened and have the actual colour (in blue ink) compared to the guess (red ink) and logged for comparison. The double blind will prevent the tester from subconsciously influencing the participant’s guess as neither testers nor participants will know the actual colour(in blue) until all skittles have been consumed. Three participants will be isolated from each other and tested subsequently.

Observations: Correct guesses:

Participant A: 24/30

Participant B: 25/30

Participant C: 19/30

Conclusions: Yellow and Green were most commonly mixed up, but the participants correctly guessed the skittle colours at a rate higher than chance, proving that skittles have uniquely differentiated flavours. ad. Participant C was the only smoker, and other studies indicate that smoking reduces ability to taste.