Project Guides (Page 5)

Increasing the Ability of an Experiment to Measure an Effect

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Sandra Slutz, PhD, Staff Scientist, Science Buddies Kenneth L. Hess, Founder and President, Science Buddies Introduction All experimental observations are a combination of signal, the true effect of a variable on an outcome, and noise, the random error inherent in your experimental technique. When designing and analyzing experiments, the goal is to maximize the signal-to-noise ratio so that you can draw accurate conclusions. Six common means of increasing the signal-to-noise ratio are: … Read more

Lift and Drag on Planes, Parachutes, and Rockets

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You may have heard the words lift and drag, but do you know what they mean? Lift and drag are aerodynamic forces that act on an object moving through a fluid (a liquid or a gas). Understanding which way lift and drag point can be important for an aerodynamics science project. This page will try to clear up some common misconceptions about the directions of lift and drag. Figure 1 shows a diagram frequently used to represent the aerodynamic forces on an airplane. The plane’s weight pulls… Read more

Sample Conclusions

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Results According to my experiments, the Energizer maintained its voltage (dependent variable) for approximately a 3% longer period of time (independent variable) than Duracell in a low current drain device. For a medium drain device, the Energizer maintained its voltage for approximately 10% longer than Duracell. For a high drain device, the Energizer maintained its voltage for approximately 29% longer than Duracell. Basically, the Energizer performs with increasing superiority, the higher… Read more

Specify Requirements

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Design Requirements Design requirements state the important characteristics that your solution must meet to be successful. For example, imagine that your problem statement relates to grocery store bags. You want to design a better grocery store bag--one that uses less expensive material than the paper and plastic bags that already exist. Your design requirements are the important characteristics that your bag must meet to be successful. Based on your problem statement, a successful bag… Read more

Variables for Beginners

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Doing a Fair Test It is important for an experiment to be a fair test. You conduct a fair test by making sure that you change one factor at a time while keeping all other conditions the same. For example, let's imagine that we want to measure which is the fastest toy car to coast down a sloping ramp. If we gently release the first car, but give the second car a push start, did we do a fair test of which car was fastest? No! We gave the second car an unfair advantage by pushing it to… Read more

Choose the Best Solution

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Defining "Best" Once you have created a number of possible solutions to your design problem, you need to choose which one is best. Requirements First, look at whether each possible solution met your design requirements. Consider solutions that did a much better job than others, and reject those that did not meet the requirements. Nice to Haves, Desirables In addition to your design requirements, you probably have some features that would be "nice to have" in your solution. These are things… Read more

Design Notebook

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The design process takes days, weeks, sometimes even months or years, to complete and involves many different steps and phases along the way. If you recorded all of your work in different places, it would be almost impossible to find important thoughts when you need to refresh your memory. And, it would be difficult to gather all your work to present your final solution. To avoid being disorganized, designers and engineers keep design notebooks, where they record every detail of… Read more

Design Requirement Examples

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The design requirements for your project will differ from those of anyone else, because yours will apply to your specific problem statement and the product, system, or experience that you are designing. In the table are a few examples of design requirements. Your requirements will be more specific and directly related to meeting the needs of your project's users. If you are designing a baseball bat, your design requirements might be that the bat needs to be: Less… Read more

Designing a Survey

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The key to obtaining good data through a survey is to develop a good survey questionnaire. Whether you are conducting interviews or mailing out surveys, you will need to know how to design a good survey questionnaire. What is a survey questionnaire? Survey questionnaires present a set of questions to a subject who with his/her responses will provide data to a researcher. On the surface, it seems a fairly simple task to write up a set of questions to collect information, but there are many… Read more

How to Make Solutions for Chemistry and Biology Experiments

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Solutions Solutions are used in a wide range of science experiments including chemistry, biology, health, cooking, and materials science. This video and written tutorial will guide you through how to make solutions and how to calculate the concentration of a solution. If you have a solution and need information on how to dilute it, or how to make serial dilutions of a sample, check out our guide on How to Make Dilutions and Serial Dilutions. Read more

Project Guides (151 results)

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