failed experiment

[tixi.13 <3]

i have just completed one of my experiments for my ESS IAs, and it appears that this experiment was a flop. i.e. my hypothesis turned out to be wrong (when i'm pretty sure that it should have been correct.

)

in regards to IAs, if the experiment you do fails, does that effect the mark you will get for your IA, or is it irrelevant, as long as long as the process and results are well presented and a clear discussion is given?

thanks!

[Sandwich]

Technically it's fine, however it does raise a few fundamental issues like - did you actually know enough background to make a realistic hypothesis? Because if your hypothesis is plain old stupid, and that's why the experiment failed, then that may indeed make you look a bit dim in the eyes of the examiner in the planning section. Also, is your method fundamentally flawed? That would also make you look stupid.

However, if it's just that something in the experiment went wrong which you couldn't really control for, then you can just get extra points for describing why and how (and what improvements you'd make) in your write-up.

So really it depends whether the failure of the experiment is due to some massive moment of idiocy of your own somewhere along the way, or whether (as tbh happens for many people!) it's just some factors you couldn't control for. Many experiments in real life have negative results and these are also worth reporting - but obviously reports like "so, we got negative results, this is because we actually forgot that for a plant to photosynthesise it must be in the sun, so they all died and we could not continue our actual experiment" or "I hypothesise that a mouse will be able to survive in the absence of oxygen" are somewhat questionable!

[tixi.13 <3]

ok, thanks. well the experiment was on global warming and testing temperature loss compared to how much carbon dioxide was in the air. we had bottles filled with carbon dioxide, plants, and normal air, but the temperature didn't really drop in any of them, some bottles' temperatures just rose more than others.

but i figure i can explore the contradictions to global warming in my discussion and talk about improvements or future testing.

[Sandwich]

[quote name=tixi.13 ' timestamp='1331958112' post='153292]

ok, thanks. well the experiment was on global warming and testing temperature loss compared to how much carbon dioxide was in the air. we had bottles filled with carbon dioxide, plants, and normal air, but the temperature didn't really drop in any of them, some bottles' temperatures just rose more than others.

but i figure i can explore the contradictions to global warming in my discussion and talk about improvements or future testing.

Well I'm no expert but that doesn't sound like a very good experiment to 'test' global warming! I'm not sure that you could realistically expect to see anything that way. Even if there was some kind of a 'greenhouse' effect going on with the CO2 absorbing some of the sun's energy, I doubt it would be significant enough in a single bottle to see drops of large enough magnitude to be measured - or not to be lost instantly to the atmosphere. Even the bottle might itself be absorbing/reflecting some of the wavelengths, added to the fact that the lack of circulating air inside the bottle is a poor representation of the atmosphere... and overall it sounds kinda crazy to me.

I'd be very wary of concluding that your results contradict global warming and be more inclined to go for 'my experiment was not really powerful enough to be able to detect any difference either way'!