NationStates Jolt Archive

Alright, this article I am writing is based on true facts that happened over my christmas break. I am an eight grader, and my grade had to do none other than science fair projects. So many thoughts went through my mind, 1. Why does gasoline burn.
2. Something about gravity and the sun and stuff.
3. Nothing.
So I immediately went for one, untill I found out we actually had to do a PROJECT, not just a report. So they wouldn't let me do 1, and two for that fact either. So I had to come up with a topic, and my mind was sparked by the fact that we were going down to our vacation home on Eluthura Bahamas. I decided to do an expirement on fish eyesight. So for the next two weeks during school I had to research on fish eyesight, which I instead used my time watching my science teacher's fish die in its tank, while trying to get my computer to talk Wookie.
Anyways, I got my report typed, it was one of the biggest in the class, thank you, thank you. So the next part was the expiriment, I decided to see if fish were attracted to certain colors. I thought hey, I know, I will take food coloring and squirt it into a controlled enviroment. Nope I decided wouldn't work, so then I wound up taking six different peices of foam down to the Bahamas with me, Red, Orange, Yellow, green, blue, purple, and black. On a coral reef I tied them all to rocks.
First day I just let the fish get used to them.
Second day was a dissaster, mr. yellow floated away in the middle of the night never to be seen again, by me at least. No fish came to the colors. In fact when I went out there to check, they were avoiding them.
Third day; the fish ignored them.
And this continued for a whole freakin week!!!! I wasted a half an hour each freakin day trying to get these fish to swim up to the colors so I could say.
"Yes the report was fun and educational, fish are attracted to different colors, goodbye."
Nope they stayed away from them.
CURSE THESE FREAKIN FISH!!!!!!!!!
I ended up going home... a failiure, my project was as I put many times in my aftermath reports, a
"Utter, and complete failiure. Fish are not attracted to certain colors."
So I assembled a entire triboard, filled with fourteen papers, all about my failed report. Even more I have to do a speech for the stupid thing!!!
I don't want to tell two judges, one is a high school girl mind you, that my project was the only failiure in the entire grade!!!!!!!!!!
I hope some unfortunate soul fails his project so if I can be a judge for it in a couple of years, I can break out laughing at this kid who failed his project, much like my friends did for me.
So in two days, I have to give the stupid speech that I've given no thought on whatso ever. So I hope I do well, tell me what you thought of the report. And wish me good luck on the final part.

Phil :tantrum:

Ouch, but this should be in general.

Sucks, but this doesn't belong in International Incidents...

It's not a failure as long as you did the experiment. Just say your conclusion was that they aren't attracted to different colors.

I could be wrong, but I think goldfish have a very very limited memory span.

Yes, goldfish have a 3 second memory span, and why would there be goldfish in the bahamas neways

You had no control. You used foam for all the colours, have you previously concluded the effect of foam on fish? Sugest in your conclusion that to increase accuracy in a second round of testing more materials needed to be used. Green foam, green rock, green metal, green metal etc.

Another thing to note is chances are you scared the fish away as you swam towards it. You'd need an underwater camera to do this test properly.

In your speech you could say something along the lines of "Due to the reaction of the subject it seems that fish have little or no reaction to a coloured stimuli. It is also very possible that because there are unnatural colours that the fish believed that these were a danger."

You could turn your speech into how effective a fish being bright coloured is a good defence against other fish.

Hope that helped some and I'm not shooting my mouth off.

Nova is right there is no such thing as a failed experiement, yes things often go wrong (disaterously wrong, like having the girl next to you empty the worng test tube down the sink... or the BOFH deleteing all your data files). But there is always soemthing to be learned and often the best results are ones that you haven't expected (belive me, this happened in my masters thesis).

By recognising short comings in your technique and offering insights into possible refinements and possible future areas of work that may have been opened up.

The best reasearch is that which not only answer's questions but also reveals new questions noone may have thought of previously.

So you have identified that that the fish don't seem to be attracted to the coloured foam, is this due to the foam, the nature of the colour, external factors such as time of day/tide, the weather, your prescense.

Identifying these issues should give you a load of points.
If anyone disagrees you then tell them that Crookfur will be quite happy to nuke them.

soz double psot