Science Buddies: "Ask an Expert"

My forth grade daughter is getting ready for her science fair.
I am concerned about the question and hypothesis we picked.
Question- Will organic fried chicken decompose faster then fast food fried chicken?
Hypothesis- Organic fried chicken will decompose at a accelerated rate due to the lack of antibiotics, arsenic, growth hormones, preservatives and steroids.
What do you think?

Hello and thanks for the question!
I do think both your question and hypothesis are excellent, especially for a fourth grade projet. They are clear, specific, and concise. Your hypothesis not only makes a good prediction, but justifies it too. And your question is straight to the point and lets the observer know exactly what they are looking at when they walk up to it. Overall I'd say both your question and hypothesis are great! Nothing to worry about!
Let me know if that helped or if you have any more questions!

We are having a problem. The fast food fried chicken decomposed faster then the organic making our hypothesis false.
Here is my question should I change the hypothesis to:
Fast food fried chicken will decompose faster then organic fried chicken due to the steriods, antibotic, growth hormones and arsenic they are feed?
If not is it ok for our hypothesis to be wrong?

For a fourth grade project, it is definitely ok for the hypothesis to be wrong. The judges like to see that. They like to see someone learn someting unexpected. But if you want the hypothesis to be correct, you can go ahead and change it too.
Let me know if that helps!

Hi -- Snobs3747 is correct that it is okay for a hypothesis to be wrong. That does not invalidate your student's experiment at all. Part of why we "test" something is to see what will happen -- and what happens may not be what we expect at the beginning. Whether your student's hypothesis was correct or not, she or he probably learned something in the process of doing the research, thinking about what might happen, and running the tests. That is the point of the project.

What you can not do is change the hypothesis to match your results. Instead, once the hypothesis is stated and the experiment happens, you present your results, honestly and simply show "what happened" and what data you collected.

You can not change the project to fit the results.

Amy
Science Buddies

hi , my 11 YEAR OLD DAUGHTER HAS A SCEINCE PROJECT DUE IN JUST A FEW DAYS. HER SUBJECT IS HOW MANY APHIDS DOES A LADY BUG CONSUME IN A HOUR. CAN U HELP ME DETERMINE IF THERE IS A TESTABLE HYPOTHESIS FOR THIS PROJECT. THE ONLY ONE I CAN THINK OF WOULD BE IF YOU HAD BOTH LADY BUGS AND APHIDS THAT WERE ALIVE. CAN YOU GIVE ME SOME OTHER IDEAS?

I was assigned by my teacher the M&M Survival Challenge Project. For my Problem Statement I wrote: How many M&M's can correctly be picked from a plate of Skittles?

Does that sound right? I am confused with including the independent variable (M&M's) and dependent variable (Skittles)?