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Big money for a good job made here. Only A grade writers please.
Format for Experiment Report
Introduction
· Start with your general topic.
· Include ample background information (this should allow the reader to quickly become familiar with your subject).
· State the purpose of your experiment.
· State your hypothesis and back it up.
· Things I need to know from the introduction:
· Why you picked this topic?
· What has past research found on this subject?
· What is your hypothesis?
· Why is that your hypothesis?
Materials and Methods
· This should be in paragraph form.
· Write, very clearly, how you conducted your experiment and what materials you used to do it.
· Include how you recorded your data.
· Basically, after reading this section, the reader should be able to go out and completely recreate your experiment.
· Tip: After you write this section, give it to a friend to read and have them tell you what they think you did.
Results
· Straight up, what did you find?
· This is where you should include any diagrams, tables, or figures.
· DO NOT include reasons why you got your results in this section, save that for the discussion.
Discussion
· Explain to the reader what your results mean.
· Why did you get the results you did?
· If you experiment failed, why?
· Was your hypothesis supported or not? (Remember, we never prove anything in science)
· What are possible future directions of this work? If you were to continue on and do a follow up experiment, what would you do?
Bibliography
This should be properly formatted and only include appropriate sources.
Appropriate sources:
·
Articles from scientific journals (You can use Google Scholar and find sources that have been published through peer-reviewed journals. You do need to use the campus server to access the articles).
· Chapters or sections in scientific textbooks (this includes your lab manual).
Inappropriate Sources:
· Websites. This includes:
· eHow.com
· Wikipedia.com (this is a good place to start, but DO NOT cite it. Scroll to the bottom of the page and look to see what has been cited there to lead to you appropriate sources).
· Livestrong.com
· Magazines
· Hearsay
ExperimentGuidelines
Working alone or with a partner you will conduct a simple biological experiment outside of class and write a word-processed scientific report on your topic. The empirical study is worth a total of 100 points as described in the deadline section, below.
· Pay special attention to the deadlines – missing deadlines will hurt your grade even if the final report is excellent. As stated in my instructors’ syllabus, I deduct 10% for every week that an assignment is late.
· All experiment assignments are due via Turnitin on Blackboard at the beginning of class. I WILL NOT be accepting paper assignments. Anything turned in after the due date on Blackboard will be considered late and points will be docked.
· Each student must write his or her own draft and final report, even if you worked with a partner.
· Write your own report and do not share it! Do not turn in 1 report with 2 names; you will both get 0 points.
· Copying even parts of the text (not the results) will yield a 0 score for all persons involved and probably a loss of participation points and campus discipline.
· If your words match those of any web site we find you will receive 0 points and campus discipline.
Deciding on a topic.
· Think of something about biology that you think is cool. Genetics. Plants. Bacteria. Animal behavior (If you have a hard time, flip through your BIO 100L manual and take a look at what we will cover this semester and see if something strikes your fancy).
· Google it.
· Find out more about it and then ask yourself a question. “I wonder what makes plants grow faster”, “I wonder what kind of surfaces grow the most bacteria”, “I wonder if there are more types of animals that live in a woody area or a desert area”.
· Once you have a question, start thinking about how you would experiment to answer your question. Don’t bog down by telling yourself: “It’s interesting but I have no idea how to do an experiment on it.” I can help you with this. The goal is for you to experience the process of questioning, constructing an hypothesis, designing an experiment (hopefully simple!) collecting data, analyzing it and then writing about the whole process, and hopefully practice writing well.
·
Topic Limitations
1. ABSOLUTELY NO MANIPULATION EXPERIMENTS ON VERTEBRATES. This includes projects such as:
a. Feeding fish different foods to study growth.
b. Giving your lactose intolerant cousin milk to see how he reacts.
c. Giving humans ANYTHING to ingest.
d. Vertebrates include:
i. You, your dog, cat, friends, family, fish, birds, most house pets.
e. I realize it may sound harmless to give your friend a can of coke and then record their heart rate to see if the caffeine has an effect, but this class does not have the proper insurances to allow that. If you turn in a proposal or a topic on these types of projects, I will dock points. If you turn in a draft or a final report on these types of projects you will receive ZERO credit.
2. You are allowed to perform OBSERVATIONAL experiments on vertebrates. This includes:
a. Going to a pet shelter and recording animal behavior
b. Completing a biodiversity study in two different areas
c. Survey studies on humans
3. Make sure your project has BIOLOGY in it. This is a biology class!! When you come up with an idea think to yourself “what about this is the study of living things”.
a. Recording the evaporation rates of different liquids is PHYSICS, not biology.
b. Recording the pH of household liquids is CHEMISTRY not biology.
c. How music affects people is PSYCOLOGY, no biology.
4. The research must be conducted independently and not from previous courses or from the internet.
Based on your observations of the world around you, pose a question about some biological phenomenon of interest.
1. Develop a hypothesis about a part of your question that can be tested using the scientific method.
2. Design an experiment to test your hypothesis.
a) What equipment (plants, pots, watering can, etc.) and supplies (fertilizer, etc) will you need?
b) What specific information, (“data”, numbers, height in mm, or temp., in °C,) will you need to gather, and how will you gather it? (Will you stick the thermometer in the soil or hold it on the leaves?)
c) What will your controls be? (Plants NOT treated with your experimental process…etc.)
d) What one factor will be varied in your experimental group?
3. Some supplies may be available from the laboratory. If you can’t supply all the materials that you will need to conduct your study- ask for them. Ask early so there’s time to find alternatives!
4. Make sure your experiment can be conducted in the time frame allowed. (Especially critical for people who want to grow plants!!)
5. Use the correct format for writing your paper.
Due Date
Assignment
Points
Criteria
Tue 9/10
Thur 9/12
Topic
5
You and your partner’s names. A prospective title, and one or two sentences describing what you wish to study. You can change this topic later but only with my approval.
Tue 9/24
Thur 9/26
Proposal
15
One-page proposal that includes: Hypothesis, Identification of dependent and independent variables, Materials list (indicate those that must be provided by your instructor) Outline of the steps in the proposed method including controls, if applicable, and when, where, and how you plan to do the experiment
Reference the provided Rubric.
Tue 10/29
Thur 10/31
Draft
30
3-4 page preliminary draft of results obtained from initial experiments. This should basically be a complete final draft with the initial results of your experiment. The more work you put into the draft, the less work you will have on the final report.
Reference the provided Rubric.
Tue 11/21
Thur 11/23
Final Report
50
4-5 following the format utilized in scientific journals. Reference the guidelines to writing scientifically.
Reference the provided Rubric.
6. With the exception of “Title”, Include the headings as part of your report.
For help with scientific writing look at:
http://writing2.richmond.edu/training/project/biology/biology.html
http://www.columbia.edu/cu/biology/ug/research/paper.html
The help from the Columbia University page includes some particularly helpful examples of correct and incorrect examples
