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1
A. General guidelines .................................................................................................................................... 3
B. Writing Lab Reports .................................................................................................................................. 3
B.1 Design ................................................................................................................................................. 3
B1.1 Defining the problem and selecting variables .............................................................................. 3
B1.2 Controlling variables ..................................................................................................................... 5
B1.3 Designing a method ...................................................................................................................... 6
B2. Data collection and processing ........................................................................................................... 7
B2.1 Collecting and recording raw data ................................................................................................ 8
B2.2 Organizing and presenting raw data............................................................................................. 8
B2.3 Data processing............................................................................................................................. 9
B2.4 Presenting processed data.......................................................................................................... 12
B3. Conclusion and evaluation ................................................................................................................ 17
B3.1 Drawing conclusions ................................................................................................................... 17
B3.2 Evaluating procedures and B3.3 Improving the investigation .................................................. 21
C The obligatory experiments ..................................................................................................................... 25
C1a. Acceleration due to gravity using a free falling object ............................................................... 25
C1b Acceleration due to gravity using a gate and millisecond timer ................................................. 27
C2a. Specific heat capacity (SHC) by electrical method ...................................................................... 29
C2b. Specific Heat Capacity by method of mixtures ........................................................................... 32
C2c. Specific Latent Heat (SLH) of fusion by method of mixtures ...................................................... 33
C2d Specific Latent Heat of Steam by Method of Mixtures................................................................ 34
C3a. Boyles law .................................................................................................................................. 36
C3b. Pressure Law ............................................................................................................................... 38
C3c. Charles Law ................................................................................................................................. 40
C4. The speed of sound ........................................................................................................................... 42
C5. Resistance of resistors in series and parallel .................................................................................... 44
C6a. Resistance v Length of a Wire ..................................................................................................... 45
C6b. Resistance v area of a wire ......................................................................................................... 47
C6c. Temperature Coefficient of Copper ............................................................................................ 50
C7. E.m.f. of Cells and Internal Resistance .......................................................................................... 52
C8a. The half-life of a radioactive isotope (protactinium-234)........................................................... 54
C8b. The half-life model ...................................................................................................................... 56
C9. Youngs double slit experiment. HL only .......................................................................................... 58
C10. Electron diffraction ......................................................................................................................... 59
C11. Nuclear energy levels ...................................................................................................................... 61
D Additional Experiments ........................................................................................................................... 62
D1. Electric Field Deflection .................................................................................................................... 62
D2. Electron Deflection in a Magnetic Field............................................................................................ 64
D3. The projectiles experiment ............................................................................................................... 66
D4. Hookes Law and the Acceleration due to Gravity ........................................................................... 67
E The Extended Essay .................................................................................................................................. 70
F Internally assessed investigation ............................................................................................................. 71
G Lab Report checklist reminder................................................................................................................. 75
H Common lab report mistakes .................................................................................................................. 76
I Problems (Answers at the back) ............................................................................................................... 76
J Answers..................................................................................................................................................... 80



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