Level 1 Physics

Vandebilt Catholic High School

W. Dupre

Semester Research Project

Experimental Design

 

Value: 15 points

 

The Experimental Design must include the following sections:

 

  1. Heading:

Team Members

Date

Title of Research Project

{1 pt}

 

  1. Research Problem:
    1. State the general topic that you will be researching.

Such as: “Static Electricity”, “Heat Transfer”, “Atomic Structures”, etc.

{2 pt}

 

    1. State the specific question that your research will attempt to answer. This is the single question upon which your research will now be focused.

{2 pt}

 

NOTE 1: Items #1 & #2 in section B will be final. Once this paper is turned in, you will not be allowed to change your research topic or research question for any reason. Therefore it is of utmost importance that you have chosen a question that is both challenging and “experimentable” (“Experimentable” means that you are able to conduct an experiment that will give vital data to answer your question, with the limited means available to you.)

 

NOTE 2: Beginning with section “C”, all items below are considered a first proposal and as such, are subject to change. Further research should necessitate at least some minor editing by the time of your final proposal on March 4, 2005.

 

  1. Preliminary Hypothesis:

State your guess as to the possible answer to your question based upon your preliminary research and intuition.

{2 pt}

 

  1. Experimentation:
    1. Compose a list of needed materials.

{1 pt}

 

    1. Give a general description of the type of experiment you will be conducting.

 

Remember that your experiment should be specifically designed to answer a single question. All other factors should be carefully considered to insure that your data relates only to that question.

{2 pts – valid experiment to test your question; 1 pt – includes some experimental flaws that need correcting}

 

    1. State the data that you intend to collect from the experiment. (Be specific)

{2 pt}

OPTIONAL: Although it will be required later, you may want to include a blank data table showing the type of data you intend to collect. Thinking through the type of data you need to collect to answer your question may help guide how you design your experiment.

 

    1. State how the data is to be collected.

{2 pt}

 

    1. How will this data be analyzed?

Later in the project you will have to include at least one graph showing the relationship that exists between a set of data.

{1 pt}