Experimental Design B/C

[nerdygrlz789]

If you make it sound good, it apparently works, looking at our last competition grade.

I agree. While everything needs to be there, if you put it into technical scientific terms, making yourself sound smart, (or smarter than you actually are in my case) then your more likely to get a good score.

Agreed. Write really fast, and come up with a bunch of words. And for the practical application, I always make up something random, and they take it. Like one experiment dealt with different kind of sauces, so I said that a sauce company could do something similar to that experiment. Or something weird like that...it works!

[Big_Platypus]

So for example, an experiment that will test how time is affected by adding tape to a whiffle ball to cover the holes, a logical application could be something like putting holes in a vehicle or possibly ammunition to increase speed, or doing the reverse.
Another question, when is it more appropriate to use each type of graph? (ex. Bar VS Line)
For example, if an experiment showed 3 trials for 3 different substances, and the times were all within a .5 second range, would it be more logical to use a bar or line graph? Our group keeps on using bar graphs but I am not sure if we are doing it correctly.

[Helix_Nebula_Freak]

Always use a line graph. A significant part of the anylys and conclusion comes from a trend, and you can only clearly see that with a line graph. Even if they were all within a small range so that the line is still pretty much horizontal the trend is still "no relationship."

[Big_Platypus]

Well at an invitational I used a line graph and we got no credit, and we were testing time trends in different solutions.
So I am wondering why I got that wrong, and if I should switch back to line graphs.

[zyzzyva980]

Just selecting the right graph doesn't automatically give you points; there's actually a lot you need to do when making a graph.

[Big_Platypus]

I know this, but in the rubric there is using the right type of graph, and they marked us off for that

[nerdygrlz789]

One invitational both our JV and Varsity teams both used a bar graph, because a line graph wasn't possible. One team just missed placing, the other placed.

[Phenylethylamine]

One invitational both our JV and Varsity teams both used a bar graph, because a line graph wasn't possible. One team just missed placing, the other placed.

What was the experiment, for a line graph to not be possible?

[Helix_Nebula_Freak]

One invitational both our JV and Varsity teams both used a bar graph, because a line graph wasn't possible. One team just missed placing, the other placed.

I remember that... the experiment was testing something about different types of sauce. (I can't remember the specifics...) The problem was that our independent variable (type of sauce) was qualitative, not quantitative, so we had no numbers to put on the x-axis and make a line-graph from. We were forced, therefore, to use a bar-graph...

Of coarse, we could have avoided the situation all together, had we planned more carefully and made sure we had a quantitative IV....

[Phenylethylamine]

One invitational both our JV and Varsity teams both used a bar graph, because a line graph wasn't possible. One team just missed placing, the other placed.

I remember that... the experiment was testing something about different types of sauce. (I can't remember the specifics...) The problem was that our independent variable (type of sauce) was qualitative, not quantitative, so we had no numbers to put on the x-axis and make a line-graph from. We were forced, therefore, to use a bar-graph...

Of coarse, we could have avoided the situation all together, had we planned more carefully and made sure we had a quantitative IV....

Yeah, you might well have lost points for that. I believe it's specified in most rubrics that variables must be quantitative.