Experimental Design

[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.

[nejanimb]

You definitely could get away with only having one of you do the experiment. If you're stuck with only having a team of two, I'd highly recommend having one person just write the entire time - they should cover probably everything except the data, stats, analysis, and conclusion. The other person should do the experiment (finish in <10 minutes or so), and you both should be furiously writing the entire time to try to pick up the slack. I don't like to think how insane it would be if I could only have one of my teammates for this event...

[EastStroudsburg13]

Oh, trust me, it's not the easiest thing in the world. We got 14th, which isn't too bad when you think that we only had 2 people and we were both freshmen.

[srsvball95]

with three people, most of us were writing the whole time so i can't imagine it with just two people- 14th isn't actually bad with just two people...

[nejanimb]

Back from states. The materials for ED were: a cup of water, a cup of bubble solution, a stack of paper, and a bubble wand.

What would you have done?

[haven chuck]

At states, we just had a nail, 5 lengths of wood with holes at the top, and a stopwatch (and a ruler). They told us exactly what to do, so it wasnt that hard. (we had to test the period of the different pieces of wood)