A huge thank you to Mr. Egan who visited us yesterday. David gave a presentation to the class on 'How caffeine really keeps us awake?'. This is our investigation for the ESB science blast.

We really enjoyed listening to David. He explained in simple terms using chemistry as to how coffee keeps us awake.  First of all he told us When we are awake a chemical builds up that makes us sleepy

When we sleep, our body reduces this chemical in our body which allows us to wake up. This chemical is called adenosine. In our brain there are 'docking stations' which are perfectly shaped to dock the adenosine. When it docks we get sleepy. In your body, Caffeine looks very like Adenosine – they are structurally similar.

 Because they are similar, Caffeine can bind, or dock, to the receptors in the brain instead of Adenosine. Therefore, making us less sleepy.

We were also amazed to see what caffeine looked like and were surprised to see the colour of caffeine was white.

We look forward to presenting our project at the ESB science blast on May 23rd. We also are very thankful to David for all of his help.