Up to now we have explored how to find a problem to work on, how to learn about it, and how to take a scientific approach. In this lesson we will learn how to plan out a project.
In many cases you will have to acquire equipment and supplies. This costs money. Even a mathematics project requires books and paper. How much can you afford to spend on the project each month? Set aside that amount and use it to purchase what you need.
This implies that you know what sorts of equipment you will need. Unfortunately there is no way around this apparent circular reasoning; you need to have a budget to get what you need and you must have some idea of what you need to determine the budget. The goal here is to seek a capability rather than perfection.
Once you have a budget, this will give you a time frame for the preparation work. You must then assign an amount of time to do the work and develop the results. Then you will want to set aside the time to write a report or paper describing your results.
You should also plan on how much time you will need to gather all of the materials you will need, include the time it takes for shipping and whatever assembly, callibration, or prototyping needs to be done.
At some point in the planning phase you need to sit down and decide what you want to get out of your project. A project may address one or more questions, where part of each question is answered by one or more experiments. Think through some of the intermediate steps on the way to your overall project goal, set these as the stepping stones you need to get to your project goal.
Look at each goal and decide what you need to do to accomplish it. What scientific action is required? Here is a partial list of scientific actions:
As you work through the steps of your project think of things that can go wrong. For each thing you think of, can you come up with some way of preventing it?
Make a list of unwanted factors that could skew your results and take steps to remove them, or at least constrain them in some way.
Set a time when you will actually begin doing the scientific part of your project.
Develop estimates of when specific goals will be met.
Make sure to include enough time to analyze the results , develop your conclusions, and to write the paper.
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