Lower Secondary M. Waterman & E. StanleyNIE 2011

Experimental Design and Mini Poster Instructions

We explored how much carbon was added to Jiaming’s carbon footprint because of his daily train ride. Now you can ask questions about some other variable that differs among members of your group and how that affects the carbon footprints.

This explorations will involve collecting data from the Carbon Calculator found at This is the html version of the website. Use this because it shows both the workplace and the home.

You will have 45 minutes to design and conduct the investigation and another 30 minutes or so to prepare a small, one-sheet, mini poster to report on your experiment. You will be using marking pens and poster paper. These posters are not meant to be professionally done, so they will be rough. However, they are meant to communicate your findings.

Investigation: Work in groups of 3 or 4

Discuss your questions from the Carbon Footprint case and sharpen your focus to develop a testable question. Design on an experiment that you can conduct to explore the question your group agrees upon.

1a. What question are you addressing?

1b. Write down the hypothesis you are testing. Use the If/then format (If I water my plants more, then they will grow more and produce more fruit).

2. What are you varying? Define this independent variable.

3. What are you going to keep constant?

4. What outcome(s) are you going to measure? Define how you are going to measure the outcome(s). The outcomes are the dependent variable.

5. Prepare a table to collect your data here.

6. Inferences: What can you conclude about your hypothesis?

Mini Poster

Use a single sheet of newsprint. You may use it in portrait or in landscape mode. You may illustrate your poster to enhance the reader’s understanding and to better communicate your findings.

You poster needs to include the following:

  1. The title of your investigation
  2. The investigators’ names
  3. The hypothesis being tested
  4. A description of how the hypothesis was tested
  5. The data
  6. Inferences drawn from the data

You will have about 30 minutes to prepare the poster.

We will be doing a poster session for 20 minutes. During that time, each person needs to visit the other posters. One person needs to be at your poster to answer questions. Work this out so that everyone gets 15 minutes to view the other posters.