Win With a Grin earned Sam Leslie 1st place in the Material World section (yr 7 - 8), the Best Sport Science Exhibit and a Bronze CREST award.
Sam is a 13-year-old from Fairhall School, who got the idea for his investigation when his brother blacked out during a mountain bike race.
His aim was to see if energy drinks do improve your performance when mountain biking. Sam sent himself, his dad and his brother on several gruelling 20km bike rides.
Each time with the aid of one of three energy drinks or water. Sam included a control (water), tested the drinks on three different riders, and was very careful to keep the tests fair.
To measure which drink helped the riders the most Sam timed how long it took the riders to complete the course and measured their rate of recovery by timing how long it took for their pulse to return to normal.
After graphing the results for each drink with each rider Sam found that energy drinks do increase performance but don't improve recovery time.