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As much as possible we encourage students to take complete responsibility for
design, construction and execution of experiments and models. We have
provided some initial guidelines in the next section which will help budget
time and set initial population densities and sugar concentrations. Students
need to:
- Formulate the logistic model as well as an alternate model.
- Determine parameters and their units, as well as solutions for the
models insofar as that is possible.
- Design experiments which will allow them to parametrize their models,
including a protocol for data collection, standardization and a plan for
turning measurements into estimated parameters.
- Design separate experiments for the purposes of validation, as well as
have some initial concept of what analytic measures will be used to select
between models or falsify them.
- Conduct experiments.
- Write up results in a complete lab report.
Like much science, this seems very straightforward in outline. In practice,
the three classes which have worked through this protocol have all needed to
reset at least once, often twice. For a `classic' experiment, results are
remarkably unreliable. Overall we have felt that this lab prepares students
very well for honest interaction between theory, experiment and
understanding.
Next: Design of the Experiment
Up: Introduction
Previous: Introduction
James Powell
2000-07-31