Scientific research final

WINTER FALL EXAM SR

1. Foundations of Research

• What “scope” means in research project

  • what’s to included and what’s to excluded in a project 

• Steps of the research process

  • Identifying a problem → reviewing sources → forming a question/hypothesis → designing study → collecting data → analyzing results → drawing conclusions → communicating findings

• Factors that determine whether a study is feasible

  • depends on time, budget, access to participants/data, technology or tools available, ethics, and researcher expertise

• Purpose of research (description, exploration, explanation, prediction)

  • Description → exploration → explanation → prediction

2. Variable & Experimental Design

• Independent variable

  • The variable you manipulate

• Dependent variable

  • The variable you measure to see if it changes

• Control group

  • A group without treatment

• Experimental group

  • A group with treatment

• Why are multiple trials necessary

  • Increasing reliability by reducing random errors

• How variables are arranged on the graph

  • Independent variable = x-axis & dependent variable = y-axis

• Examples of dependent and independent variables in real experiments

  • Testing plant growth with different light levels 

  • Measuring cars stopping distance with different speed

3. Data, graphs, and analysis

• What slope represents data analysis, how do you know?

  • Rise/run to show the how much the dependent variable for each unit changed with the independent variable

  • Positive slope means its increasing and a negative slope means its decreasing

• Scatter plots and trendlines

  • Visualize the overall pattern

• Line of best fit: when and why it is used

  • To show general trend and overall pattern

• Determining the meaning of the “area under the curve”

  • Represents the total quantity accumulated over range

• How to interpret the stopping distance scenarios 

  • Using graph to see how the different factors affect stopping distance

• Reliability of data and what replication means

  • Reliability: How consistent results are

  • Replication: Doing the same experiment repeatedly

4. Research methods

• Difference between qualitative and quantitative research

  • Qualitative: Non-numeric

  • Quantitative: Numeric

• What makes a source reliable/unreliable

  • If its peer reviewed it reliable

  • It is opinionated and unverified or lack of evidence is unreliable

• The role of hypothesis and when they are formulated

  • A testable prediction made before collecting data

• How much confidence to place in a single study (self explanatory)

5. Academic writing & formats

• Key difference between APA and MLA formatting

  • APA focus on author date format (Scientific) 

  • MLA focus on author page (Humanities)

• Why scientific journals use APA

  • Emphasizes clarity, data relevance, so scientific work is easily understood 

• When features APA papers typically include

  • Title page, abstract, main body, references, headings, and in‑text citations

• Components of a proper reference page

  • Authors, publication year, title, source (book, journal, URL)

6. Engineering Technology Tools

• How to classify science fair projects into appropriate categories -- Understanding broader engineering disciplines

  • Project fields like biology, physics, engineering, etc.

  • Identify the main problem and problem being address 

7. Applied concepts

• Basic Relationship between friction, stopping distance, and speed

  • More speed usually increases stopping distance; friction helps reduce stopping distance

• How to analyze motion from physical evidence

  • Interpreting marks, distances, and positions to understand movement

• Units associated with impulse and what impulse represents

  • Impulse = change in momentum; unit is Newton‑second (N·s)