Science Buddies: "Ask an Expert"

Good afternoon,

I am doing my science fair project on iron in cereals. I know what my variables would be. I am just stumped on my quantitive data. Would it be the amount in grams that I find in each trial?

Also, what is your opinion on how to display this data? My mom was thinking of a data table and maybe a line graph? I appreciate any guidance please.


[Administrator note: Relevant project: https://www.sciencebuddies.org/science- ... ast-cereal ]

If you have access to a scale, you can definitely record the mass. In this case, it would be best to first record the mass of the cereal before blending. You can then record the mass of the amount of iron collected. You can use these two measurements to find the amount of iron per gram of cereal. A more in-depth explanation of these calculations is explained at the bottom of the experiment page (https://www.sciencebuddies.org/science- ... eityourown).

No worries if you can't access a scale. Rather than recording the mass, you can make a relative scale. The procedure recommends separating the scale into 4 categories: not present, small, medium, or large. For example, if you didn't see any evidence of an iron pellet, you could label that trial "not present." However, if the iron pellet looked pretty big, it could fit under the category of "large."

The procedure recommends creating a scatter plot with your data. A scatter plot is similar to a line graph, however, the data points aren't connected. The x-axis could include the recorded grams or relative scale while the y-axis would have the percent daily value. You can then plot the points for each trial.

Hopefully this helps! Please let us know if you have any other questions, and good luck with your project!

-Chloe