Before you complete your assignment you’ll need to be familiar with how to complete a practical and write up. CLICK ON THE DOWNLOAD button to download a Guide to the Practical Skills Booklet. Hopefully it will be useful to everyone doing HIGHER ASSIGNMENTS.
Many think this has too much on Excel but it can be removed from the word document if you are going to hand plot your graph.
I’d be grateful for feedback on this document and how it can be improved. Thanks.
How to record your relationships!
This is not a discussion about your friendships but how the data can be described.
The best terminology to use for graphs that have
a trend which is a straight line is âa linear relationshipâ.
That avoids issues around whether something is directly proportional or proportional.
Directly proportional only applies when the graph is a straight line through the origin (or close to the origin within the uncertainty in the y-intercept). It is best to avoid âproportionalâ altogether.
A curve, such as that produced when plotting irradiance against distance, can never be described as showing an âinversely proportionalâ relationship, since it does not show the actual relationship (it could potentially be any number of different relationships).
Inverse proportionality can only be claimed when the correct graph of, for example, irradiance against 1/d2 is drawn, and it produces a straight line through the origin.
The type of graph produced for an internal resistance experiment is covered by the term âlinear relationshipâ, as it follows the equation y=mx+c format.
My thanks to my colleagues Mr Belford and Mr Viola for allowing me to add this flipchart which I have converted into a pdf file (hence the apparent pages of not many changes- it works well on a flipchart) for you to see how to go about an assignment.
Feb 2025