EEI Journal Scaffold

Phase one: Planning

What is the topic you are investigating?

Introduction
Background research
What do you know about this topic from personal experience and from
your science course?

Additional research: document your research into extension of your topic

not covered by your course (remember you need to acknowledge
secondary sources both in-text and end of text).
List the full end of text references here.

Planning
What factors (variables) may affect the phenomenon you are
investigating?

Which of the variables are you going to investigate as your independent

variable (this is the variable you will change to see what effect it has on
the dependent variable)?

How will the independent variable(s) be changed in the experiment?

What is the dependent variable you will be measuring?

What hypothesis are you testing? State your hypothesis as a relationship

between the independent and dependent variables.

Experimental Design
Describe your experimental set-up using a labelled photo/ diagram and
explain how you will collect your data.

Safety precautions: you must complete a risk assessment that needs

to be approved before you start practical work.

Phase two: Experimenting

You may need to carry out some preliminary trials. Were there any
problems?

How did you modify your experiment to fix the problem (perhaps include
another labelled photo/ diagram).

How do you make sure your data will be accurate?

Data Collection:
Record your data in a table. You may also save this straight into Excel, so
it is easy to create graphs.

Phase three: Data analysis and discussion

What is the best way to present your data? Is it appropriate to draw a
graph? What type of graph is most suitable?
Remember to plot the independent variable on the horizontal axis.
Remember that the title of the graph should mention both the
independent and dependent variables.
Analyse your data:

Are there any patterns or trends in your data?

What is the relationship between the variables you have

investigated?

Are there any errors or anomalies in the data?

Is the data valid?

Is / are the hypotheses supported by the data?

Discussion:
Using science concepts explain the patterns, trends or relationships, errors
and anomalies you have identified in your data and justify why the data
supports/ does not support the hypothesis.

How confident are you with your conclusions?

How much uncertainty / error is associated with your data?

What are the main sources of experimental error?

How could the design of the experiment have been improved to

reduce error?