Thursday, May 16, 2013

HW - 5/16/13

Your homework is to work on your lab write-up due next Wednesday. A good idea would be to write up your methods and what you did today. See below for a guide.


“Some Like It Hot” Lab Write-up

Introduction

Your final task is to formally write-up your conclusions and reflections about the microbial growth experiment and combine this with the introduction that you wrote. The components of this write-up are as follows:

  1. State the hypothesis that you tested
    1. Explain your thoughts behind your hypothesis – remember it is an educated answer to the experimental question.  Your point of view needs to be supported by a logical argument as well as any resources (notes, activities, discussions in class, materials outside of class).

  1. Construct a graph that shows how the number of colonies or boxes covered by bacteria was affected by the various herbs/spices.

  1. Make inferences based on your observations.
    1. Be sure to refer to your data/observations specifically to support your inferences.
    2. Be sure that you answer the experimental question that you were investigating. Make sure that your answer to your question is supported clearly by data/observations.

  1. Using the data you collected, make a claim about your hypothesis and the data.  Was the hypothesis supported or not supported by the results of your experiment?
    1. Be sure to refer to your data/observations specifically when evaluating your hypothesis.
 
  1. Discuss all sources of error, which may have impacted the results.
    1. Discuss each error and the specific impact it may have had on the data and/or how you interpreted it.
    2. Evaluate your experimental setup – Do you think that the experiment worked well?  Why?  What changes would you make? Why would you make them?
    3. Based on any and all errors – how reliable are the results and your evaluation of your hypothesis?  Do you trust your data?  Why or why not?

Writing Conventions - make sure to:
·      Write in the 3rd person and avoid the 1st person – avoid I, we, my, our, etc. as much as possible and instead use phrases such as “the group” or “the hypothesis.”
·      Use only the past tense when writing about experiments you did.
·      Write in paragraph form with complete sentences – not in bulleted, outline form with the letters and numbers seen above.
·      PROOFREAD

Your completed write-up of this experiment is due in class on Wednesday, May 22, 2013.

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