Designing an Experiment

Think of a Question  What do you want to know? (1)  “What is the effect of the____on the _____?”  Change the question into a Title statement: The Effect of the _____________ on the _______________. Independent Variable Dependent Variable

Example: What is the effect of a class on a student’s stress level?

Make a Hypothesis  A prediction of the experiment’s outcome (2)  “If the __________________ changes then the _________________ will __________________.” independent variable dependent variable (guess??)

Design the Experiment  What is your goal?  What will you do to test your hypothesis?

Independent Variable (IV)  The one variable that the experimenter _______  Each experiment should have only ____ (3a)  Levels: Various changes that will be made to the IV changes ONE

Dependent Variable (DV)  The variable that changes due to the __  This is the ___ that you measure (3b) IV data

Constants  Factors that stay the ____  There are many in an experiment (3c) same

Control  Used as a ________  Unchanged/Natural  Not present in all experiments. (3d) comparison

Make Observations & Record Data  Two Types of Data: _________ Quantities, Numbers __________ Qualities, Descriptions, Comparisons (4) ClassHeart Rate Math72 bpm English86 bpm History74 bpm ClassPulse Quality MathNormal EnglishStrong HistorySlightly Above Norm Quantitative Qualitative

Observations and Data  Your data table should include the IV – independent variable you are testing and the DV – dependent variable or the data you are collecting.

Trials  More trials = More __________ reliable results

Study Results  Data often shown as a ____so the experimenter can analyze the data. 1. Bar Graph 2. Line Graph 3. Pie Chart graph

Sources of Error  Things in an experiment that may affect the results

Conclusion 5 Sentences:  Purpose of the experiment  Was Hypothesis supported or not  How Data supports/does not support Hypothesis  Sources of Error  Conclusion you can draw (5)