Science Buddies: "Ask an Expert"

I did a variation on the oil viscosity test. I tested 3 brands of oil, at 3 different temperatures using a homemade viscometer.
So the three data sets I have are the 3 brands of oil,3 temperatures, and times of drop from the viscometer. I am trying to make a graph in excel to show the results, but I am not sure how to enter my data to get a meaningful graph.


As I see it, I may be having trouble because I technically have two independent variables: temerature and Brand of oil. MKy dependent vairable is the time of drop.

My controlled varialble is the boil weight, all are 10W-30.

Can you help?

Hi smkalsem,

My suggestion is to make a bar chart that shows the viscometer data grouped by oil brand.

To do this in Excel:

1. Make columns with headings “Brand”, “Temperature 1”, “Temperature 2” and “Temperature 3”. Or you could label the temperature columns with the actual temperatures you tested.

2. Enter the oil brand name and viscometer readings for the 3 temperatures in the row immediately under the headings. Add rows for the other two oil brands.

3. Select the cells containing the headings and the data you entered. Click on the chart wizard. Select bar chart (or column chart). You should get a chart with 3 groups of bars. Each group represents a brand. Each bar represents a viscometer reading. Bars will be color-coded by temperature.

4. You can use the Excel chart wizard to customize the graph as you like.

I hope this helps. Please ask again if you have more questions.

A. Norman