Student Research Project 2011

I have chosen to do the comparative study of melting times of various chocolates. I will gather answers together by doing a number of things, one of which will be conducting a controlled experiment. 

Questions I will be asking myself throughout this experiment

 Before I answer these questions I have to indicate what materials I am going to use and what the controlled, dependant, and independant variables are.


The materials I am going to use for this experiment are:

• Stove
• 3 Brands of chocolate ( one expensive, one average priced and one cheap)
• Stopwatch
• Kitchen Scales
• Saucepan/pot
• Wooden spoon

 The controlled variables of this experiment are:

• The temperature the chocolate will be melted at.
• The amount of chocolate which is being melted.
• The same saucepan/pot.

The dependant variable of this experiment is:

• The time it takes for each brand of chocolate to melt (all the same amount).

The independant variable of this experiment  is:

• The different brands of chocolate being used to melt.

To make this experiment more reliable and valid I will be repeating this experiment 3 times and each time I will record my results in a table which I have designed. My table will consist of 4 columns and 4 rows. The 1st column is allocated to the brands which are being used and the 3 other columns are for the times it takes for chocolate to melt (each column- different test).

EXAMPLE

The amount of time it takes for different types (quality) chocolate to melt.

(100g) Chocolate Brand	TEST 1: Time (min)	TEST 2: Time (min)	TEST 3: Time (min)
1.
2.
3.