Recording and presenting results
Chemistry · Key Stage 2 · The School
The table comes first
Draw the table BEFORE the experiment, with a column for the thing you change and a column for the thing you measure, each headed with its unit. Doing it first forces you to decide what you are measuring, and it stops results being scribbled on a corner of the page and lost. Repeats get their own columns, with a mean at the end.
Which chart
A BAR CHART compares separate groups — which towel, which surface, which material. A LINE GRAPH shows how one measurement changes as another changes continuously — temperature over time, distance as force increases. Using a line graph for separate groups draws a line between things that have no in-between, which is meaningless and looks convincing.
Reading your own results
A pattern is a sentence: "as the ramp got steeper, the car travelled further." Look for direction first — does it go up, down, or stay level? Then look for anything that breaks the pattern, and say so rather than smoothing it away. An odd result is either a mistake worth finding or a discovery worth checking again.
Investigation: how far does a car roll from three ramp heights? Draw the table first: a column headed 'Ramp height (books)' with rows for 1, 2 and 3, and three columns headed 'Distance (cm) try 1, 2, 3' plus one for 'Mean'. Drawing it forced four decisions — what you change, what you measure, the units, and that you will repeat three times. Fill it in as you go, and the graph almost draws itself.