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help sheet: Science
Investigations
To get the maximum marks you can in a science investigation
you should make sure that your write-up includes all the points
in the 4 sections below. It looks like a lot of things you need
to write about, but try setting each point out as a separate section.
Take a look at an example investigation to give you an idea of how
to set your work out.
Click here
for an example of an investigation.
Planning
and Predicting
- Have you made a list of the different factors (things) that
might affect the experiment?
- Have you written down what you are measuring?
- Have you written down what you are changing?
- Have you written down what you are keeping the same and
given a reason why you are keeping these things the same? (How
will you make the experiment a fair test?)
- Have you written a detailed method of how you are going
to do the experiment? You can draw diagrams to help you explain
your method.
- Have you written a list of apparatus you will be using,
including what size you will need? (E.g., 50 ml measuring cylinder)
- Have you written down how to make the experiment safe?
- Have you decided how many measurements/observations you
will make?
- Have you chosen a suitable range of measurements/observations
to make? (Usually 5 measurements is a suitable range.)
- Have you decided how many repeats of your measurements/observations
you will do?
- Have you sorted out a table to write down your results?
- Your table has the correct units in it.
- Have you written a prediction of what you think will
happen?
- Have you given a scientific explanation for your prediction,
including diagrams?
- Have you written about the practice experiments you have
done, or any text books you have used?
- Have you given details of how you'll make your measurements/observations
precise and reliable?
Carrying
Out
- You have worked safely.
- You have made enough measurements/observations to write
a conclusion.
- You have made a suitable range of measurements/observations.
- You have repeated your measurements/observations if necessary.
- You have repeated any results if they look anomalous
(if they don't look right).
- All your results are in a table, including any results
that you repeated, or any that didn't look right (anomalous).
- You have put in the units.
Analysing
and Concluding
- Have you worked out an average for your repeated results,
which does not include any odd (anomalous) results?
- Have you made any calculations using your results that
could help you write a conclusion?
- Using your results, have you written what you found out?
- Have you drawn a graph, chart or diagram of your results?
Have you labelled the axes?
- If appropriate, have you drawn a line graph that fills
at least two thirds of the graph paper?
- If the points on the graph look as if they form a straight line,
have you drawn the best straight line through them using
a ruler?
- If the points form a curve on a line graph, have you drawn a
'free-hand' curve of best fit? (Don't join the points dot
to dot.)
- Have you given a detailed scientific explanation for
your results, even if this is similar to the science you wrote
in your plan?
- Have you compared your results with your original prediction?
Evaluating
- Do your results agree with results from other sources
(E.g., text books)?
- Do all your results agree, or do some look wrong? (E.g., if you
plotted a graph, did you expect all the results to be on a smooth
line, or should some be scattered around the line?)
- Does your conclusion explain all your results or have you had
to leave some out because they did not fit a pattern? (They were
anomalous.)
- When you repeated experiments, how much difference was there
between the results?
- Did you use scientific theory to predict what your results
might look like?
- Did you plan to collect a lot of different results, or only
a few?
- Have your repeated any of your experiments to see whether you
get the same result again?
- Did your experiments cover a big enough range to be sure that
one of your theories fits better than any other?
- Did you use text books, encyclopaedias, etc., to find out
more about the topic you were studying?
- Did you use reliable equipment for your work?
- How precise could your results be? (E.g., did you judge
by eye or use an instrument? How big were the divisions (marks)
on the scale of the instrument?)
- How well could you control other factors (E.g., temperature)?
- If some results don't seem to fit a pattern, can you
explain why? Have you repeated those tests to see if you get the
same strange results again?
- What extra work can you suggest which would give more
(or better) evidence?
Click here to plan your
own investigation on water hardness.
Click here to see an example
investigation.
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