Think about mice racing each other. Would they prefer a smooth floor or a rough floor? This experiment will tell which floor the mice go faster on. To make this experiment work correctly, you would need to figure out what you need for this experiment, what would be contained in the experimental group, and how you would do it. The first thing before testing the mice, are figuring out what our materials are. You can’t just have a couple of mice run across the floor since you wouldn’t know the speed of their run or if they even wanted to run at that time.
You would have to figure out all of your obstacles that block you from doing this experiment and block them by thoroughly preparing. The first obstacle is to get the mice. You would at least need 3 mice for this experiment and the more you get, the solution would be more precise and accurate. The second obstacle is if the mice would really want go forward when you are about to test it. To get over that obstacle you would need something that would catch the mice’s interest, such as, cheese.
However, when you want them to go straight toward the cheese, when testing, they could go in many different ways such as, zigzags. So then, you would need to find out how to block them from going other directions. This can be overcome by putting two boards parallel to each other, on the different surfaces, just wide enough for the mice to go forward. Another material that you would need is a ruler and a stopwatch so that you could figure out how much distance you wanted the mice to go and then find out the speed of the mice.
So for materials you would need at least a couple of mice, a ruler, a stopwatch, some cheese, and boards for this experiment. The next part of an experiment is to know what is contained in the experimental group. In the experimental group there are three parts. The first part of the experimental group is the variable. A variable is one alteration changed in the experimental group in order to find out the solution. To figure out this is easy. What are you testing in this experiment? Whether mice runs faster on rough surface or smooth surface.
The rough surface and the smooth surface are the ones that are going to be changed so that is our variable. The next part of the experimental group is our control group. The control group is what should not change so that the solution is found. To make this clearer, you wouldn’t want to find out the speed of the mice when the two surfaces’ distances are different. If the distances were different, the mice being tested on the longer one would take a longer time than the mice on the shorter distance because of the differential distances and not because of the surfaces.
So the distance should be the same. This is a control. Another control is that each mouse should run on both surfaces. If each mouse were tested on one surface instead of being tested on both surfaces, useless interferences would interfere. So the control group would contain, same distances for each surface and each mice being tested on both surfaces. The last part of our experimental group is what our constants are. Constants are other influences that should not interfere with our experiment. The first constant is the different mice sizes and weights.
When catching the mice, they should all be almost the same size, otherwise if there was a taller mouse and a smaller mouse being tested, the taller one could be faster than the smaller mouse because it had longer legs. The same goes with the weight too. The mice should all be almost the same in weight. So weight and sizes are very important constant. The time of day is also an important constant. If we tested one at noon and one at night then the one at noon could go faster since he might be hungrier then the one tested at night.
Another important constant are the temperature, wind speed, wind direction and the weather. All of these would affect the speed of the mice so these should be the same for every test. If these controls happened then the solution wouldn’t be correct. So controls should not interfere with the experiment. These three things, the control group, the constants, and the variable are the three parts to the experimental groups. The final step to the experiment is to actually test it. You would use your materials and make two courses on different surfaces with the boards blocking the mice from going other directions.
Between the boards, on one end, you would also put a slice of cheese for both surfaces. Then you would make sure that the constants wouldn’t bother the experiment and then start. You would put one mouse on the end of either the smooth surface or the rough surface, that doesn’t have the cheese and let it run to the cheese. When it starts moving, you would start your stopwatch and when it reaches the cheese, you would stop it. So that you don’t forget, you should put the time on a sheet of paper. Then with the same mice you would try it on the other surface you didn’t do.
After completing the first test for the first mouse you would test the other mice by repeating what you did in the first test. The experiment would be done after that and you would figure out the speed by putting in numbers for a reasonable rate. Then you would be able to know the solution. Learning how to figure out the correct way to doing an experiment is important. By learning how to do it, you can do many other things such as doing other science projects that would help the world greatly. Learning small things, such as our experiment with mice, will add up to do great things.
