Experiment Guide

Experiment Report Guide

Working alone or with a partner you will conduct a simple biological experiment outside of class and write a word-processed scientific report on your topic. The empirical study is worth a total of 100 points as described below.

Pay special attention to the deadlines - missing deadlines will hurt your grade even if the final report is excellent.
Assignments are due at the start of your class, although individual instructors may move a date by a week or two.
Each student must write his or her own draft and final report, even if you worked with a partner.
Copying even parts of the text (not the results) will yield a 0 score for all persons involved and probably a loss of participation points and campus discipline.
Write your own report and do not share it! Do not turn in 1 report with 2 names; you will both get 0 points.
If your words match those of any web site we find you will receive 0 points and campus discipline.
Electronic copies must include your name as the “Author” on the first page, along with the name of your non-author partner, if you had one.

Deadlines:

Due Date	Assignment	Points	Criteria
2/6 - 9	Topic	5	You and your partner’s names. A prospective title, and one or two sentences describing what you wish to study. You can change this topic later but only with approval of your instructor.
2/20 - 23	Proposal	15	One-page proposal that includes: Hypothesis, Identification of dependent and independent variables, Materials list (indicate those that must be provided by your instructor) Outline of the steps in the proposed method including controls, if applicable, and when, where, and how you plan to do the experiment
4/2 - 5	First Draft	30	Two to three page preliminary draft of results obtained from initial experiments, in other words, What happened? Many instructors chose to require a complete draft of the final text.
4/16 - 19	Final Draft	50	Four to five pages following the format utilized in scientific journals, as further described below. Include in report the headings as listed.

Specifications:

1. The research must be conducted independently and not from previous courses or from the internet.

2. Assignments must be word-processed and double-spaced with 1-inch margins.

3. Font size must be 11-12 points in Times, New Century Schoolbook, Arial, or Palatino.

4. Points will be deducted for late work.

5. Each part successfully completed will be a part of the report's final score.

For help with scientific writing look at: http://writing2.richmond.edu/training/project/biology/biology.html http://www.columbia.edu/cu/biology/ug/research/paper.html The help from the Columbia University page includes some particularly helpful examples of correct and incorrect examples

Approach your overall experiment ideas with these points in mind:

1. Based on your observations of the world around you, pose a question about some biological phenomenon of interest.

2. Develop a hypothesis about a part of your question that can be tested using the scientific method.

3. Design an experiment to test your hypothesis.

a)     What equipment (plants, pots, watering can, etc.) and supplies (fertilizer, etc) will you need?

b)    What specific information, (“data”, numbers, height in mm, or temp., in °C,) will you need to gather, and how will you gather it? (Will you stick the thermometer in the soil or hold it on the leaves?)

c)     What will your controls be? (Plants NOT treated with your experimental process…etc.)

d)    What one factor will be varied in your experimental group?

4. Some supplies may be available from the laboratory. If you can’t supply all the materials that you will need to conduct your study- ask for them. Ask early so there’s time to find alternatives!

5. Make sure your experiment can be conducted in the time frame allowed. (Especially critical for people who want to grow plants!!)

6. Use the format on the reverse for writing your paper.

7. With the exception of “Title”, Include the headings as part of your report.

Format for Final Report:

Title

Introduction

Include your hypothesis and your reasoning behind it. Discuss the thought processes that led to your hypothesis. Why is this experiment interesting? What would you hope to learn by doing this? Are there widespread misconceptions that you will address? You will review the existing literature in this section.

You must use a minimum of three resources relating to your topic. At least one of these must be a printed source such as you would expect to find in a library and at least one must be an electronic reference from the Internet. In this section, summarize and discuss what you have read, and how this ties in to your topic. Back up any statements you make with correctly-cited references, listed later in your bibliography. You can use Wikipedia to get information to educate yourself but you may not rely on this and you should not quote it or copy from it. Any information you get from internet sources should be confirmed from a second, high-quality source.

Materials and Methods

Write this section in paragraph form and tell what you did for your experiment and what materials you used. Tell what your controls were and state what were your dependent and independent variables.

Results and Discussion

Here you present your results and say what they mean in terms of your hypothesis. Present your data in tables or graphs and discuss in paragraph form what the results indicated and if your hypothesis was supported. If your results turned out differently than you expected, what possible factors/causes might account for that, and what possible alternate hypotheses might be posed to explain these data?

Bibliography

List your references in one of the standard bibliographic formats, such as CBE style manual.

Potential Topics (try to think of your own ideas!)

For research on “animals” use mealworms, crickets, or earthworms available from pet stores and bait shops
Describe and categorize plant communities at a local park (there might not be any “control” group for this but there would be a lot of work learning to identify plants and to document them.)
Effectiveness of bacterial cleaning agents in controlled experiments (eg, those used to clean plumbing)
Documenting the population of certain animal species on campus, eg: Kingbirds, Cooper’s hawks, fence lizards, skunks, Anna’s Hummingbirds, American robins, Calif. Towhee’s, ground squirrels, rabbits…. You should include a variable like amount of plant cover, time of the semester, or presence and absence of irrigation…
Examining the effect of Chili powder and its active ingredients on the feeding habits of: crickets, mealworms, roaches, frogs, lizards, etc.
Hair dye as a: toxin, mutagen, carcinogen, in animals (see animal rules, below).
Testing family members for the presence of genetic characteristics – you’d need a hypothesis!
Sampling the flying insect population over the semester using a black light and a sheet.
Mosquito larvae and how they’re affected by water pH

Warning! We search the internet too! Pre-constructed on-line experiments will not be allowed! Also, make sure there’s Biology in your experiment – adding things to water and measuring the pH is a chemistry experiment. How does your experiment relate to living things?

Finally, some limits! For research on “animals” use mealworms, crickets, or earthworms available from pet stores and bait shops. You may not conduct a study that gives any chemical (alcohol, tobacco, drano, etc.) to a human. You may not use alcoholic beverages in your study (for example, on plants or snails) unless you are 21 or over. You will not be given bacteria to take home. And…. No experimenting with chemicals on vertebrates! No giving your dog a medicine, for example. You should expect that you will have to provide all your own chemicals, and supplies. However, we have a few supplies we can lend- with sufficient advance notice. Make your supply requests to your instructor, not the coordinator.