Follow the experimental design!
Just like our friend Dorothy over there, you need to follow your own version of the yellow brick road - that beautiful specimen of experimental design YOU developed. Remember how she was instructed to stay on the path and not stray? You now need to do the same. Use exactly the amounts that you said you were going to use in your materials list. Follow exactly the steps that you have outlined. But most importantly, have fun! This is where you get to see what actually happens when you perform the experiment. The great thing is - you get to do that experiment more than once! Why do the experiment more than once? If you perform your experiment only once, or if you use only one test subject (one bean plant for example), you might get some results that aren't what they truly should be. Even if your result seems to confirm your hypothesis, you can’t be sure some other variable didn’t have a hand in the outcome. (What if the growth of your bean plant was hurt by a bug eating the roots instead of by lack of sunlight, for example?) Scientists test their hypotheses over and over again, and for your science fair project you should too! The more you test, the more accurate your results will be. If you get the same results each time, that will go a long way to showing your results are accurate. Make sure you follow the exact same procedure each time you do a test. You should do AT LEAST three trials to have a good science fair project. Click on the button to learn about the importance of good observation notes in this step. |