978-1-4799-3229-0/14/$31.00/© 2014 IEEE March 8, 2014, Princeton, NJ 4th IEEE Integrated STEM Education Conference

Sleep: The Best Medicine

Yash Sanghavi and Aswin Balaji John P. Stevens High School, {ysanghavi1, aswinbalaji18}@gmail.com

Abstract - Sleep has always been an indispensable part of human nature, yet it is astonishing that the majority of society has a poor understanding of it and fails to understand the significance of it. In fact, famous scientist Thomas Edison once stated, “Sleep is a criminal waste of time, and a heritage from our cave days.” Yet, as an essential operation in our daily schedule, sleep has a plethora of purposes ranging from revitalize the body after a stressful day of work to consolidating memories in order to sharpen one’s mind. Evidently, a majority people are unaware of how imperative it is to attain a proper night of sleep, and how detrimental it is towards one’s health to attain a poor night’s of sleep. This poster aims to educate society on sleep, from the stages of sleep to possible disorders, and to spread awareness of the importance it holds. The poster will be a single sheet display, printed from FedEx. The poster will appear with the following titles: ‘Dreams,’ ‘Effects of Sleep Deprivation,’ ‘K-12 integration,’ ‘Sleep Disorders,’ and ‘Stages of Sleep,’ In addition, pictures will be used to supplement each subject covered as well as an overall picture to describe the theme of the poster. Index Terms - Anatomy, Physiology, Sleep Studies

INTRODUCTION

Our project first started our interest toward something that affected us personally, sleep. Each and every day, we, and students like us, often found it difficult to find a full night’s rest due to our workload both in and out of school in addition to school hours set by the district. Yet, we wondered what toll our bodies would take due to this inability to sleep for the recommended time period. Thus, we began to research this topic and realized that we should help spread this knowledge with others. The main problem we are addressing is sleep deprivation. As we progressed in our studies, we also began to study about sleep cycles and dreams. Our main goal in creating this poster is to spread our new found knowledge to influence those who are sleep deprived and to try and obtain new hours for high school students so they may have the recommended number of hours of sleep. Our team members who participated in this study include Yash Sanghavi and Aswin Balaji.

BACKGROUND

There were no issues in findings for our research as the information easy accessible and there were no requirements to address. The media is currently spreading awareness about sleep deprivation because it has become a national epidemic. There are no other versions of our projects and this is the first time our team has done this topic for this conference.

METHODOLOGY

In order to develop a set of possible solutions, we thought about how we may influence individuals in order to persuade them to sleep for a long period of time and recognize the importance of sleep. We then proceed to compile an argument of why these persons should attempt to sleep for a longer period of time. Finally, we presented this argument to students at our school and attempted to persuade them.

RESULTS

The design did work out as intended as we presented our findings to school students and family, and it provided them an incentive to attain better sleeping habits. Students at our school now are pushing for later school hours.

FUTURE WORK

In order to carry this project to the next level, we need support from a large and diverse group of people. If we are able to do this, we will be able to further spread our knowledge with others and push for later school hours in local school districts and statewide afterwards.