Science Buddies: "Ask an Expert"

My child is doing the experiment on how a chick breathes in an egg shell. He is doing one of the variations. He is doing,”Do other bird eggs give similar results,”with duck and quail eggs in addition to chick eggs. He is using 6 eggs for each type of bird and recording his observations about the outside of the shell and the inside of the shell for each egg. He can make a table for this, but we do not see any way to make a graph that is required of him? What does he need to do to make a graph out of this because nothing is really measured, but just observed. Can you make a suggestion?


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Hi - Since your student is creating a table of data during the experiment for the different eggs (and different types of eggs), your student will be able to use the data gathered to make a graph. What columns was your student planning for the table?

With categorical data (which is what you have in an experiment like this), you will use bar charts or pie charts.

Before starting, your student will want to think of a way to categorize the observations -- and create some kind of scale that can be used. (This will inform the table you set up.) For example, you might have a 0-3 scale. 0 = no dye, 1 = little dye, 2= medium dye, 3 = lots of dye. When working with a scale like this, you have to pick an example of each and set them aside as the "gold standards" to compare to. This gives you a benchmark against which others can be compared. After gathering the data, you could calculate averages. Or, your student could make a pie chart for each type of bird.

Amy
Science Buddies