Results

Now you are finally ready to conduct your experiment, but don’t start too fast. You first must create a way to organize your results by creating a data table. A data table is simply a graphic organizer that you use to display your results. The data table should list the IV, trials, and average.

At the end of your experiment, you should also create a graph to visually display your results. There are many types of graphs, but typically you will create a bar graph or line graph.

Bar Graph – Bar graphs display data in columns or bars. Each bar has its own value and is not dependent on other variables. For example the lightest airplane does not depend on the heaviest airplane; therefore the above table should be displayed in a bar graph. Typically you only graph the average.

Line Graph – Line graphs display data in lines and show how the results change over time or throughout an event. For example, if you wanted to record the results of how water dissolves from one day to the next, you would create a line graph to see how the water evaporates.

No matter what type of graph you create, the labels always stay the same. There are 3 labels that must be included on the graph.

1. Title – “DV of IV”
2. X-axis (bottom label) “IV”
3. Y-axis (side label) “DV”