Science Buddies: "Ask an Expert"

How do you document that your experiment has failed if a piece of equipment has failed to perform properly during experiment? ie thermometer reading never changed even when direct heat applied

Hi tracydent,

Welcome to the forum!

Sorry to hear that you've had trouble with your experiment -- it's good that you're being careful about the documentation. In this case, as with any experiment, the best practice is to report very carefully what you did and what you observed. You could explain why you knew the temperature had increased but that you don't have exact numbers because you later discovered that the thermometer was not working.

You might be able to report estimated temperatures using reference points or by repeating parts of your experiment with a working thermometer. For example, if you immersed something in boiling water, you know that the temperature of the water was 100 degrees C. If you immersed something in cold water from the tap or refrigerator, you could measure the temperature of water from the same source -- even though there are fluctuations, that sort of estimate (with circumstances explained) is better than nothing.

The best solution would be to repeat the experiment with a working thermometer. Don't pretend that the first run didn't happen, and report those observations, but depending on your hypothesis and data analysis it's likely to make sense to spend most of your time talking/writing about the run with accurate temperature values. This also gives you a chance to correct any other problems or mistakes you might have noticed the first time.

I see that your project question is "How does applying heat effect a rubberband?" If you tell us more about how you applied heat and how you measured the effect on the rubber band, we might have more specific suggestions.

Best wishes,
Amanda