Scientific Research

Effective Research Papers Summarizes the theory behind your experiment Conduct research to predict what will occur in your experiment and use that research to understand what happened in your experiment Include the techniques and materials used in conducting your experiment Frequency can predict reliability

What Makes a Good Research Paper? For a Good Research Paper, You Should Answer "Yes" to Every Question Have you defined all important terms? Yes / No Have you clearly answered all your research questions? Does your background research help you to make a prediction of what will occur in your experiment? Will you have the knowledge to understand what causes the behavior you observe? Have you included all the relevant math that you understand? Have you referenced all information copied from another source and put any phrases, sentences, or paragraphs you copied in quotation marks? If you are doing an engineering or programming project, have you defined your target user and answered questions about user needs, products that meet similar needs, design criteria, and important design tradeoffs?

Do’s Take notes as you are researching Use peer-reviewed articles Be objective Use correct grammar Use complete sentences Give credit where credit is due Use at least 3 peer reviewed articles

Don’ts Try to Reinvent the wheel Plagiarize Use previously conducted experiments as background information, but don’t… Plagiarize Use I or We. Your paper is formal and does not include words to describe your opinions. Leave any information out or change your results Science is about learning from the mistakes and discoveries that we made

Correct the following paragraph from a research paper: Which battery is better? Hypothesis As I test for increasingly long periods of time, the Energizer AA battery will maintain a higher voltage than other batteries. Background Research Batteries come in many shapes and sizes. Some are no larger than a pill, while others are too heavy to lift, but most batteries have one thing in common – they store chemical energy and change it into electric energy. The cell are the basic unit that produces electrisity. A battery has 2 or more cells, but people often use the word battery when taking about a single cell, too, like a dry cell. A dime-sized battery is a cell. Cells act like pumps to force electrons to flow along conductors (DK Science 150). I think that if we compare these batteries and cells by testing them we can determine which is better.

Format 1 inch margins Double spaced 12 point font, Times New Roman for text For figures, use Arial 12 point font Head each section of your paper using the correct organization order Label each section Use APA Google purdue OWL apa for guidance

Resources Galileo Britannica teen New York Public Library Our library’s website has several resources: Use the science fair tab and the science websites tab http://www.atlanta.k12.ga.us/domain/1773 Galileo Resource for peer-reviewed articles On the bottom of the page, click galileo teen Britannica teen New York Public Library

Example Conduct Research on the one of the following topics using Galileo High School Come up with at least 6 sources and a hypothesis for your mock paper. Take notes in your INB When you are done, you may continue your research on your science fair topic. Topics Which AA battery is better? How will soda brand effect the rate at which Mentos will dissolve?