Tile Lab

 

This past class we white boarded yet another lab, the tile lab, from our “laborama” (see first post). In this lab we had to compare the area and the mass of VERY odd, annoying, and random cut pieces of carpet.

1)      Question

·        What is the relationship between area and mass?

2)      Prediction

·        Our group predicted a direct, linear graph with a small gradient. Also, area would be the independent variable(x) and mass would be the dependent variable(y).

3)      Set-Up

·        The set-up of this lab was pretty simple. Since we’re not allowed to “calculate” measurements (meaning we can’t use math to find our measurements), we had to trace the tiles on a piece of graph paper and count the number of squares to find the mass. Then to find mass, we used the triple beam balance.

4)      Data

·        Ok. So obviously if you looked at my group’s data table, you can see that a few of the measurements are really weird and completely off. I feel that some of the problems were due to the fact that we had multiple people trying to count the squares each using a different method.

5)      Graph (& Formula)

·        Our graph is probably really confusing because there are two formulas and one of them is quadratic even though the line is evidently linear. So our group was split between linear and quadratic. The half that thought it was quadratic only picked so because the points lined up well with that equation; while, my half went with linear because we knew that linear was the obvious chose and the linear equation lined up very well without the outliers.

6)      Conclusion

·        On the picture, the conclusion says, “For every cm² that area increases, mass increases by .006 grams”. That conclusion statement was for the other half of the group’s equation. So for our conclusion we got – For every cm² that area increases, mass increases by about 1.8 grams.