Experimental Design

[nejanimb]

I don't think it's possible to not split up the written part... there just wouldn't be time otherwise if only one person was doing the writing! Just have everyone do different sections... does that not work? Still looks pretty neat, I think.

[sadistic_cottoncandy]

we split up the writing part. at the beginning of the year, we talked about who wanted to do what, what was really plausible with the set up we had, and then we compromised. it works fine, and we don't really care about neatness, as long as the judges can read it.

[Paradox21]

Coodinating yourselves and knowing exactly who is writing what is really important. For me it was the difference between 3rd at regions and 2nd at state.

[Avis_de-Incendia]

Well I had really bad luck on that part then; I was the only person on my team with good handwriting, And I was the only one who knew what to write. xD One person was subbing for another. >.>

[binary010101]

So is there any way to split up the written part to save time and still make it look neat? I would think that would be pretty tough.

Have one person do the procedure, materials, and conclusion, and have the other two do the experiment, record data, and graph.

[Sunshine]

Well, we skipped our line of best fit and stuff that go along with that because we seriously had no idea how to fit that into our experiment. Other than that, I don't think we skipped anything else, we split up everything (me doing most of the writing for the same reason as AsllaPiscu XD), did a bit of arguing, finished our own parts, then checked over each other's work. Surprisingly, we didn't bomb it.

If there's one or two people in your group that don't really know what they're doing though, maybe you can try doing a mock experiment, except don't give yourself a time limit, and talk the people through each and every single step, discuss it together, then slowly speed your time up with each experiment, and hopefully by the time of comp, they'll have a better idea of what to do.

[nejanimb]

I'm surprised that you would even be able to finish the lab and make conclusions without a line of best fit. The working up to speed practice strategy does seem like a solid tactic though.

Usually, if we're behind on time, I find it better to go quickly through sections than to skip anything. Better give yourself the greatest opportunity to get rubric points than to leave anything out, even if it means making some of the section less than perfect - at least it's there.

Do most people have the whole team do the experiment? Two people? One person?

[EastStroudsburg13]

We only had two people do this event, but we both did the experiment. I'm not sure how well it worked though...

[srsvball95]

It's better to have three people on this event, though. Me and Sunshine did Experimental Design at state and invitationals (Wasn't there at regionals) and we were basically writing the whole time. The experiment part of it doesn't take very long and if you have two people who are doing the experiment, the third person (In my case, Sunshine) can be doing the writing that you didn't finish before you started the experiment.

[EastStroudsburg13]

I know that. But seeing as the only two people with more than 3 events on my team were freshmen (me- ), we couldn't really get enough interest in the event for three people. This is out of 12 total team members also.