Clashing Group 4 projects... what to do?

[kker1]

This is a bit of a rant, so just stick with me here.

Our topic for group 4 projects this year is "flight." Our group, composed of myself (SL physics), one HL chem and two HL biology students, decided we would investigate the factors surrounding the fall of fruit from trees, so that we could include the bio students in what we were doing (and keep it more experimentally feasible than something involving birds).

It was generally decided, though we didn't hash it out very deeply, that the bio students would take something like the reason for fruit dropping in the first place, as well as bruising; I would talk about velocity of falling fruit in relation to density, surface area vs. volume, etc; and the chemistry student—let's call him Matt—would take something involving chemistry.

And so it is that the Group 4 project's deadline is fast approaching, and, as it turns out, Matt seems to have performed an experiment exploring the velocity of falling fruit! (He uses some justification as to why it falls—no pun intended—under chemistry rather than physics.) Somewhere we had a breakdown of communication, and this leaves me in a bind. Can/should I do the experiment I've been planning on, independently of him? Can I use his data, exploring further in my own direction with another experiment, or simply analysing it my own way; would this be too similar to what he did? Should I simply scrap it altogether and pick some other experiment?

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

[Sandwich]

The group 4 project isn't really a big deal in terms of scientific quality, it's just an exercise to show that you work well as a team blah blah blah and basically tick the little group 4 box. So you could indeed use the same data to show a different thing. Alternatively you could just look at something else, like perhaps you could look at the size of the twig that the fruit is attached to and its tensile strength/properties of it. Perhaps look at a minimum diameter or something that would enable it to support the fruit right up until the fruit has reached its maximum size or something random like that.

I'm sure you can think of some other application? Also it wouldn't really require any experiments, just calculations, so it would be fast. I assume that would count under Physics.