Aristotle (384-322 BC) is wrong!

(aka Aristotle and Chocolate cake)

In this lab you will prove that Aristotle's philosophy that heavier objects fall to the earth faster than lighter objects due to their weight is wrong. This lab is completely free form, just like Galileo had to do it, and you will be handing in your completed lab on notebook paper. Your lab write-up will include: (please notice a lab write-up is written the exact same way as a recipe out of a cookbook!)

Statement of the problem: (what are you investigating?)

Hypothesis: (what do YOU think the correct answer is? But don't use "I" or "me", just state the hypothesis like you were stating any other fact. Oh, by the way, IT DOES NOT MATTER IF THE HYPOTHESIS YOU CHOOSE TURNS OUT TO BE WRONG (if you KNEW what the right answer was to begin with, why would you bother doing the experiment? Which is precisely why Aristotle got this wrong- he never tested it)- THE VAST MAJORITY OF HYPOTHESES TURN OUT TO BE COMPLETELY WRONG! (remember Edison and the light bulb filament?)

Materials: List out everything you used in the experiment.

Experiment: Describe in a step-by-step format what you did. Usually short sentences numbered and in order are a good, direct approach.

Observations: While doing an experiment, it's a good idea to jot down any interesting effects in your lab book. When writing up the lab, you can place the pertinent observations here. Depending on the field of science you are studying in, this section is sometimes not necessary or the observations are placed in the data section.

Data: Record here what you observed or measured. DO NOT draw any conclusions or explain anything here! This section is only for cold, hard data.

Conclusion: Students have a real hard time here, but this is the easiest part! Just see if your data matched your hypothesis. If it did, then just say so in a complete sentence (include the hypothesis in this sentence so the poor sap reading this doesn't have to flip back to the front to see what it was). If it doesn't then do the same thing but explain what DID happen!

That's all folks! (please do NOT to turn this sheet in- I don't need the paper)