BIEN 435 Group Laboratory, Dr. Jones,
Last Updated: January 21, 2006
Objective:
Design and
conduct an experiment to test a physiological hypothesis.
Suggestions:
Your
experiment will relate to some aspect of physiology that includes knowledge
gained in BIEN 301, BIEN 401, and/or BIEN 430 (i.e. something of a mechanical
or transport nature)..
Requirements:
You are
required to include the following in the project:
1.
A hypothesis that is interesting and testable.
2.
Design/construction/analysis of the instrumentation
needed to test your hypothesis.
3.
Calibration of the instrumentation being used.
4.
A negative control (against which your hypothesis is
tested).
5.
A positive control that enables you to verify the
validity of your experimental system.
6.
Preliminary data collection to check the feasibility
of the experiment.
7.
A refined experiment that makes use of experience
gained with the preliminary experiment.
8.
A theoretical model for the physical phenomenon being
studied.
9.
Statistical testing of your hypothesis (e.g. t-test,
f-test, anova).
10.
A formal written report in the format Abstract,
Introduction, Methods, Results, Discussion, Conclusions. Be sure to answer the stated hypothesis in
your conclusion section.
Deadlines:
Friday, January 27th: Submit to me by email three suggestions for
experiments. I will return comments to
you for your consideration.
Wednesday, February 1st: Select your topic. Email a title to me and a brief “proposal” (3
pages maximum) that addresses the relevance of items 1-10 above to your topic.
Lab Sessions, February 1st and 2nd: Perform
some preliminary measurements to evaluate their feasibility.
Wednesday/Thursday, February 8th/9th: Set up preliminary apparatus and take any
preliminary data.
Wednesday, January 15th: Turn in a
brief report demonstrating the processing of your preliminary data and the
comparison to theory.
Wednesday/Thursday, February 15th/16th: Revise
experimental apparatus and take complete data set.
Thursday, February 22nd (