Showing Your Discoveries

THIS IS LEGACY MATERIAL - the science is correct but the marks no longer apply!

Up to 8 marks are available for analysing results from your practical investigation. Here we get the first four...

A.4a

It's wise to always include a graph, no matter how basic. Some people prefer to do it by hand (it's often much quicker!), others use a computer. Do what you like, but make sure it's good. Just because computer graphs look good, it doesn't mean they are any good...

Graphs

Using spreadsheets, such as Excel, to produce graphs is a good idea. The only problem with them is that they need lots of messing around before you get the result you need. Click here for help!

If you are drawing a graph by hand and don't have enough graph paper, print some out! Click here.

If you missed all the maths lessons on x-y graphs, click here!

Back to business. For 4a, you don't really need to write any more than for 2a. A simple graph is almost enough, although normally this mark is only in context with 4b. Here goes:

Well done, but why not label those axes and give the graph a title? Tssk!

A.4b

For 4b, you should probably make a comment about the results based on the graph you've drawn.

comment about the results based on the graph as well!

The trouble is that experiments give different sorts of results, depending on what you're investigating. In other words, graphs can show very different things.

You need to use the right language to get good marks. Lucky we wrote the next section then!

Scientific analysis - using lines and lingo

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