Somerville House Middle School Science On-line: Year Seven

Is it Alive? Experiment

What if you were given two very similar objects like these
and were told one was living, and one was non-living?
Could you design an experiment to tell the difference?

Think about how your class could carry out such an experiment and write some ideas in your Journal.
What sorts of things could you do? How would you make sure it was a "fair" test?
To help you with these questions, go

to the XSIQ section on designing experiments, or to
The Mad Scientist or to
The Science Room
or here.
or read Sections 1.9 and SRP.2 in your text book.

In class you will be asked to design and carry out an experiment to answer these questions.
You will need to record your observations and measurements using an Excel spreadsheet like this one.
Once you've opened this spreadsheet, save it to your own folder.
Each student should have a copy of their groups's work. It's silly to rely on other people to do it for you.
Record your observations each lesson. Later, you will create graphs using any numerical data you have collected.
Once you have collected and analysed the data, you will decide what it means, and tell other people by writing a report. See the link below, or Section 1.9 of your text book to find out how.

Homework.

Fill out your reflective journal.
Keep adding to your glossary.
When the experiment is completed, write a report and email it to your teacher.