Phase 2:Experimental Design & Materials List

Phase 2:Experimental Design & Materials List

Linden High School Agriculture Department

Phase 2:Experimental Design & Materials List

You will be continuing the written report for your Agriscience Fair in this portion of Phase 2. Using Phase 1 in your google docs please complete the following portions of this assignment by adding to what you have already started. All Papers must be typed and be shared with Mrs. Dyk’s through google docs by Tuesday November 1, 2016 at 11:59 p.m. Partners only need to submit one paper. MrsDyk’s google email is as follows:

What to turn in:

  1. All portions of Phase 1 (Be sure to make any corrections needed as noted in your paper by Mrs. Dyk)
  2. Title Page, Introduction, Objective/Hypothesis, & Literature Cited Page
  1. Materials and Methods
  2. The complete list of materials used to complete the project
  3. The methods of experiment used (procedure). The paper should provide the reader with enough information so (s)he could repeat the experiment (Please note that as you continue with your project this section may need to be corrected and updated. It is a work in progress).
  4. (Optional)The experiment design or other related diagrams if needed. These are needed to help reader see visuals of project if needed in order to repeat the experiment accurately.
  5. Be sure to properly cite in this section of your paper if you used any sources in your procedure. Also remember to add to your literature cited page if it isn’t there already.
  1. Start Thinking about Results!
  2. Although nothing needs to be turned in for phase 2, you should start considering how you are planning on collecting your data. Begin a Field Notebook (Hand Journaling) of everything you do with your experiment once you start.

Guidelines:

  1. Reports must be printed on 8 ½” x 11” white paper
  2. 1” margins used throughout report
  3. Font size must be 12 using only Times New Roman, Arial, or Courier fonts
  4. Papers should be double spaced.

Methods and Materials:

(3 paragraphs minimum)

The first sentence should be in third person past tense. Remember that the example below is just an example, and current scorecards for the Agriscience Fair Project competition award more points for a methods and materials section that is written in paragraph form rather than list form.

Example of the methods and materials section:

The methods used to test the four designs of bridges were:

  1. First the four designs of bridges must be constructed with the amount of material available
  • bridges could not exceed a volume of 2 ½” X 3 ½” X 12”
  • two bridges of each design were built
  • each bridge can not exceed four pieces of ¼” by 36” long pieces
  1. Once the bridge was complete, it was placed over a gap with the bridge over lapping the edges of the gap by 1”
  2. Then an I-bolt was placed through the bridge (from bottom to top and in the center of the bridge), and anchored with a nut and a washer at the top of the bridge with a large metal plate that covered at least the width of the bridge
  3. Following that, a bucket would be hung from the hook part of the I-bolt, and was to be filled with sand (using a small cup) until the bridge failed
  4. To conclude the experiment, the bucket (before emptied) would be placed on a scale and the weight at which the bridge tested failed would be recorded in a field book
  5. After the experiment of one bridge was concluded, the remaining bridges were tested and the weights at which they failed would be recorded
  6. After all the bridges had been tested, the weights at which the two bridges of the same design failed would be averaged out to receive a more accurate measure
  7. The averages of all four designs would be placed in the Bar graph, Pie chart, and be placed in a chart or graph showing a comparison of all four designs

Materials used in this experiment were:

32 pieces of ¼” X ¼” X 36” balsa wood

1I-bolt with nut and washer

1bucket (size did not matter as long as it could hold 20 lbs. of sand

1large metal plate (larger than 2 ½” X 2 ½”)

2pieces of 4” X 4” X 12” wood (at least 4’ to 5’ off the ground and 10” apart)

1bottle of glue (any kind as long as the same glue is used on every bridge)

150 lbs. bag of sand that could be used over again for the testing of each bridge

1small cup the size of your average coffee cup

Agriscience / ARP
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