Guidelines for choosing a topic/hypothesis and for designing the experiment: 1. The hypothesis should not be something which is obvious. There should be at least some doubt about the answer. For example, the hypothesis that heavy objects when dropped will hit the ground harder is too obvious to qualify. 2. Use of survey data is discouraged. If some sort of survey is used, it cannot be the only data used. 3. Your typical eighth grade science fair type project will be too simple to work here. Hypotheses involving plants are discouraged, but not necessarily outlawed. For Example: plants grow better with water than with coke. Something unusually interesting and unique involving plants might be acceptable. 4. The more specific your hypothesis is, the better. For example, rather than “Polyurethane bowling balls are better than methacrylate bowling balls,” say “Polyurethane bowling balls curve more sharply than methacrylate bowling balls.” 2 5. If you are having trouble choosing a topic, consider something related to your work or to one of your hobbies. For example, tennis player might investigate whether composite tennis rackets can produce a faster service than a fiberglass racket. The question to be investigated does not have to be specifically science. 6. Your experiment should, in general, be repeated with enough experiments to make your conclusion believable. For example, in a hypothesis about some particular diet pill, there should be several people in the study. You should probably not be in the study, as this would tend to insert bias into the study. The final submitted project should consist of the following: 1. A careful statement of the HYPOTHESIS. This section may include some background to the question, why you were interested in it and so forth, but in any case I want a clearly identified, concise statement which is clearly labeled as your hypothesis. 2. VARIABLES.A concise statement/description of the dependent and independent variable involved, as well as any control variables which are significant to the testing of the hypothesis. It may be helpful to explain briefly why you are controlling particular variables, and how you will do this. 3. METHOD.A careful description of the approach to testing the hypothesis and of the experimental method used. In this section, the more details you give, the better. A brief description of your thinking on this subject may be appropriate as well. 4. A DATA section. Ideally, this will include data table(s), graph(s), photographs, etc. Optional but strongly suggested will be some sort of statistical treatment of your data: average, percentage, discussion of precision, standard deviation or the like. Please keep the data separate from the discussion of the data.The project you turn in should include your raw data.In other words, I want to see the original data in the form you originally collected it, not only some sort of analysis you calculated later. 5. A DISCUSSION of the data, the implications, problems in collecting the data, or anything else which will give the experiment context. 6. CONCLUSION.Bottom line, was your original hypothesis confirmed, denied, or left as ambiguous. Explain and justify your conclusion. You may want to include suggestions for improvement or further investigation, as well as further predicted consequences. Maan Saliwa
Doctor Carl Ewig
Science 110
21 September 2022
Research Proposal
I hypothesize that daily intake of Lion’s Mane dietary supplements will increase
cognitive function and improve memory of the research participants. The independent variables
of this project include those taking daily doses of the dietary supplements and those taking a
placebo. The dependent variable will be either improvement of memory, stagnant results, or
decrease in memory function. In order to yield these results, I plan on performing a short term
cognitive memory test at the beginning of the study then repeating the same test with the
participants after 2 weeks, 4 weeks, and 6 weeks, after half of which have taken the daily
supplements and half have taken placebo. The results of these tests will determine if my
hypothesis was correct or incorrect.