Your Experiments

Before you actually start doing any practical work you should have an idea of a couple of experiments that you could do.

Imagine you have chosen to investigate High Diving and Water Depth. Your first few experiments could be; Experiment 1 How does height affect the depth the diver goes to? Experiment 2 How does the mass of the diver affect the depth the diver goes to? Experiment 3 How long does it take for the diver to resurface after hitting the water?

These experiments could take around a week to do. After this you may decide to follow up any number of further ideas based on what you have found out from these. There are marks awarded for showing progression and development.

For example, having done experiment 3 using a stopwatch you may decide that a better method would be to use a video camera. With this method you may also be able to produce graphs showing the depth at different times.

Do not be afraid to ask for advice. You are expected to and will not lose marks. If you are given good advice then act on it.

Remember to use a variety of approaches. Don’t just do the same experiment each time, changing one of the possible independent variables and measuring the same thing.

For a few of your experiments you may decide to do a preliminary experiment first.