The Banana and Pear Experiment

[JKJeffery]

We did the fruit ripening experiment twice and both times the pear without the banana ripened faster. This is contrary to what the research shows should happen and I cannot figure out what went wrong. HELP.

[Louise]

We did the fruit ripening experiment twice and both times the pear without the banana ripened faster. This is contrary to what the research shows should happen and I cannot figure out what went wrong. HELP.

Nothing "went wrong"- the results are the results!

Here are some things to think about tho-
were the containers the same?
temperature?
volume?
starting ripeness of both pear and banana?
sunlight?

How did you judge ripeness.. softness?

Louise

[hhemken]

Louise is right. You should never pre-judge your results, whatever came out needs to be analyzed and explained.

If you think the results are wrong, you need to explain why you think so in objective terms, such as those Louise mentioned.

Did you do the entire experiment twice, i.e. 4 test and 4 controls twice? What were the results? Could you give us the average ripeness score for each of the two test and two control groups?

If you can calculate the standard deviation (search on google if you are not familiar with this term) for each group, so much the better.

[Louise]

Louise is right. You should never pre-judge your results, whatever came out needs to be analyzed and explained.

If you think the results are wrong, you need to explain why you think so in objective terms, such as those Louise mentioned.

Did you do the entire experiment twice, i.e. 4 test and 4 controls twice? What were the results? Could you give us the average ripeness score for each of the two test and two control groups?

If you can calculate the standard deviation (search on google if you are not familiar with this term) for each group, so much the better.

hhemken- Thank you for expanding on my comments. You can only do the experiment and workup as carefully as you can. I think this is a really important point- particularly with science fair or school lab projects where the experimenter "knows the answer". You often learn more when you get the unexpected results, and if you've had to examine your methods in detail to look for possible sources of error, you gain more expertize in the experimental techniques.

So, when trying to explain unexpected results, I think the first step is always to make sure that you didn't have any uncontrolled variables that you didn't think of. I listed a few in my first post- if something wasn't constant between the two groups that could be the source of the unexpected result.

The other end of it is to double check the analysis, which is covered in the post above.


Louise