Practical account writing

Question 1

what do you need to include in a practical account writing?

Answer 1

Equipment
Measurements
Calculations
Range
Reliability
Graph
Looking for...
Improvements
Safety

Question 2

what do you need to include in equipment?

Answer 2

a labelled diagram
variables
‘set up as shown in the diagram’

Question 3

what do you need to include in measurements?

Answer 3

which variables you measured with their equipment

e.g. “I measured the length with a rule”

Question 4

what do you need to include in calculations

Answer 4

any calculations used or would be used
written equation not symbols
e.g. “I calculated the speed using the equation speed = distance ÷ time”

Question 5

what do you need to include in range?

Answer 5

range of the independent variable in the experiment and the increment you chose or would choose
e.g. “I decided to change the length from 10cm to 10mm, increasing the length by 10cm each time”

Question 6

what do you need to include in reliability?

Answer 6

you make a practical more reliable by repeating and calculating an average (on a calculator) of the repeated variable
mention the variable!

Question 7

what do you need to include in graph?

Answer 7

what you would do with the data
plot the graph
e.g. “Plot speed on the y axis against time on the x axis”

Question 8

what do you need to include in looking for?

Answer 8

simple statement first: e.g. “as voltage increases, so did current”
advanced statement second: e.g. “the graph is a straight line that passes through the origin, therefore voltage and current are directly proportional to each other”

Question 9

what do you need to include in improvements

Answer 9

key words: random error, reaction times, systematic error, parallax error, zero error
think back to the variables measured and recall anything that made it difficult to measure the values accurately
identify this difficulty and suggest a way to improve the accuracy of measuring the variable

e.g. “it was difficult to measure time accurately because of my reaction time starting and stopping the watch. to improve this i would use light gates with a data logger. breaking one beam starts the stopwatch and breaking the other stops the stopwatch”

Question 10

what do you need to include in safety?

Answer 10

mention at least one suitable and valid safety precaution
tying hair back and running in the lab do not count
e.g. ‘be careful not to drop the weights as they are heavy and may hurt”