Science Buddies: "Ask an Expert"

Posting on behalf of parent/student

Project: https://www.sciencebuddies.org/science- ... candy-snap

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Can someone send some clear directions on how to do the candy snap project? I am a confused parent, trying to do this project with my child. I do not understand the table to document the findings. I do not get the “trials”. If you are putting one candy bar in the freezer to break and leaving one room temperature to break. What are the trials for? Are you leaving the candy in the freezer different hours to get different result? Are you suppose to leave candy room temp for different hours in each trial? I’m confused.

Hello,
You are asking a good question "what is a trial" ...
You are right to ask ... sometimes people use the term "trial" to refer to each specific experimental setups, such as Snickers in the freezer for 1 hour.

In this project, as in most Science Buddies projects, "trial" refers to the repetitions of a test for a particular setup, say Snickers in the freezer for 1 hour.

Using this latter meaning, Table 1 is set up so you conduct 3 trials (repetitions) for Snickers in the freezer for 1 hour ... and 3 trials (repetitions for Snickers at room temperature.

This process is explained in Step 8 fo the Experimental Procedures:
(Project: https://www.sciencebuddies.org/science- ... candy-snap):

"Repeat steps 5–7 two more times for your two other room-temperature, chocolate-covered candy bars. Each test is called a trial. Scientists always do multiple trials for an experiment, to make sure their results are repeatable and not just a fluke."

The importance of at least 3 trials (repetitions) for say Snickers at room temperature vs Snickers in the freezer for 1 hour should become apparent when you compare the freezer results to the room temperature results: if you had just one trial (repetition) for freezer and one for room temperature, the results are likely to be somewhat different. But when you have 3 results for each setup, you can see if the 3 results for the freezer look similar to each other and different than the 3 results for room temperature.

The information you have looking variability within the 3 freezer results vs the variability within the 3 room temperature results should help you evaluate the differences between freezer vs room temp results.

Please let us know if this helps and please let us know if you have more questions!

Madeline
Moderator

PS Your comment about looking at the effect of leaving the candy in the freezer for longer times is important .... the project procedures say to leave the 2 remaining candy bars in the freezer while testing the first candy bar. But it is important to test the remaining 2 right away ... so you don't introduce a time effect if you waited longer than a few minutes!

You might be interested in the Science Buddies guideline for "Repeating a Science Experiment":

https://www.sciencebuddies.org/science- ... procedures