Thursday, May 6, 2010

Explaining the Method

Well this post is solely dedicated to explaining my experiment a.k.a dumbing it down. So it's just a way of me reminding myself why I did certain things and identifying controlled variables and stuff for my report. 

First I set up my equipment, so that the milk doesn't lose its heat while I prepare my other equipment, like measuring my vinegar. After the milk reaches approximately 50 degrees celcius (the temp. of the milk is an unavoidable error/inaccuracy which I have to write in my report) I pour the milk into the ceramic bowl and quickly add the vinegar to the bowl of milk. Again, I have to do it quickly so that the milk doesn't cool down, although if I do it too fast I might spill some or burn myself. Should that be in the risk assessment? Oh dear, I totally forgot we had to do one. Or do we? O-O
Anyway, then I use a spoon (do I have to say if its metal or wooden and if it effected the experiment or not? kill me.) to stir the milk and vinegar so that they'll mix and form the casein. I have to do it for one minute for every experiment because it's a controlled variable as stirring it more might effect the end result.
Then whatever is in the bowl should be put in the strainer over the sink, so that I can get the casein. I'll take the solids (I wonder if it'll be hot or not?) and try to mould it into a thin rectangular shape so that it dries faster in the sun.
Then I think I need to record what the time is, and I probably should have said that in my method, but write it down somewhere so that I know when I should take it out of the sun. I think another unavoidable error might be how much sun each of the plastics get because I can't watch over it 24/7.
Then I'd take the casein away and tabulate the information with what I think might be the dependent variables. I'm keeping my options open at the moment.
Finally I repeat the experiment with different amounts of vinegar, to see how the dependent variables change. Did I need a hypothesis and aim as well? I'll write that in my next post. 
I said that I had to repeat the experiment with no vinegar because it should be my control group one. I don't think that's the right term, but I learnt that you should do something like that just in case it does it my itself... pardon me if I don't make sense. And Ms Zhang I feel sorry for you for having to read all of this. ^^

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