Soil Compaction Experiment for EES (1 Viewer)

[horse9996]

I have an assessment task coming up where we have to design and perform an experiment to determine the impacts of soil compaction. I'm basically pouring water through soil in plastic cups with holes at the bottom so compare the permeability of each but I'm struggling to come up with stuff for accuracy, validity and reliability. Also we have to answer why the experiment is best done individually rather than in a team, which I'm not really sure how to answer.

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

 

[fan96]

Reliability is probably the easiest. You should have a wide range of soil samples differing in their compactness to reduce the impact of outlier results. You need to control all these variables. The soil should all be the same, the holes should be the same, the plastic cups should be the same too and they should be filled with the same amount of dirt. You also need to pour water consistently (the same way) each time, which is probably why this is better as an individual experiment (different people will pour water differently).

Validity is how well your experiment actually does what you said it would do. You can assess the validity of your method and the validity of your results. Do they address the aim?

Accuracy... I'm not sure if there's a standard system used to measure permeability or not, but you could discuss elements related to your reliability, since a very unreliable experiment would produce incorrect results.

 

[ichila101]

I have an assessment task coming up where we have to design and perform an experiment to determine the impacts of soil compaction. I'm basically pouring water through soil in plastic cups with holes at the bottom so compare the permeability of each but I'm struggling to come up with stuff for accuracy, validity and reliability.

In reliability it would be using as fan96 said, using multiple samples of the soil (i.e. have a large sample size of 20-30 cups of soil and water rather than 5-6) but it can also include repeating the experiment multiple times.

For your experiment you would have obviously written up a procedure so for the validity you would write about whether or not you correctly followed that procedure, step by step, if you made any errors, etc. You can also write about using the correct equipment for the experiment as using the correct equipment makes the experiment valid.

For accuracy you would compare your experimented results to theoretical results (which you may or may not have to find via research) and then give reasons as to why there are errors in the case of any errors occurring.

Also we have to answer why the experiment is best done individually rather than in a team, which I'm not really sure how to answer.

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Did you design this experiment? If so, then you can talk about the fact that because you designed the experiment, you have a far clearer understanding of the experiment so working in a team will only increase the chance of error as other team members wont properly understand the experiment like you do. If you didn't design the experiment then I'm not really sure either without more details on what kind of experiment it is.