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TAMU ARCH 212 - Lab Write Up One

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Lab Write Up One: Observation and the Scientific MethodJosh HowardTexas A&M UniversityAbstractOur first lab focused on the scientific method and applying it to observation and research.Before doing any observation, we defined the question we were trying to answer which was Where do people on this part of campus come from? (Texas A&M University Geography Department. 2017) We then used the steps of the scientific method and our lab began formulatinga hypothesis and began discussing how we could answer this question through scientific observation. Our lab was divided into six groups with each group assigned to a different parkinglot so that we could observe as many areas as possible. My lab group then developed a graph so that so that we could keep track of all of the information we were trying to observe. After going outside and recording observations in several parking lots, our lab compiled our data and compared the results with our hypothesis. The results showed that there were more vehicles thanwe thought there would be, but less of these vehicles were trucks than we predicted. As expected, there was only a small number of out of state vehicles. BackgroundThe scientific method is the most accurate way of conducting research. It involves forming a scientific question, and then forming a hypothesis, which is an educated guess as to what the answer to your question might be based on current information. Once this is done, scientists determine the most accurate way to test these claims. Then, they make observations and collect data. They interpret their results from their data and draw a conclusion so that they can answer their questions. This process is usually repeated many times for an experiment to verify results. Our lab followed the steps of this method when conducting our observations in the parking lot.Question and HypothesisOur question is Where do people on this part of campus come from? (Texas A&M University Geography Department. 2017) The main method of transportation in Texas is cars. The Texas Department of Motor Vehicles registers about 24 million vehicles every year in the state of Texas(Txdmv.gov, 2018). The Texas A&M Student Report also reported that about 6.5% of students are U.S. residents from out of state (Dars.tamu.edu, 2018). Based this information above, it would be reasonable to assume that about 6.5% of the vehicles are out of state. Before I did some research, I estimated that we would see around 4% of vehicles from out of state. My other hypothesis was that about 25% of the vehicles would be pickup trucks because trucks are fairly popular in Texas. I expected to see my group’s parking lot (lot 15) fairly full because our observations were conducted during the middle of a work day. I guessed that there would be around 50 cars. I estimated this number because Parking Lot 15 is a smaller parking lot, but due to the time of day I knew it would be almost full. Experimental DesignAs stated earlier, my group designed a graph so that we could efficiently and accurately record our observations. To gather our data, we simply walked around the entire parking lot and tallied the total number of cars, making a different mark depending on whether a vehicle was a truck or not. We also looked at the license plate of each vehicle and recorded whether the vehicle was from out of state. I also learned that it is important to make a chart to record data because it guarantees that everyone knows exactly what information they’re trying to find and this format also helps prevent bias. No one can make any assumptions based on false evidencebecause we counted the exact numberof out-of-state and Texas vehicles and whether they were a truck or not.LimitationsDue to the limited number of people we had to record data, our lab could only collect information from six parking lots out of the many on campus. This means that obviously our data is going to be somewhat incomplete if it were compared to data from the entirety of campus.I believe it would look differently because there were faculty in our parking lot. If we had observed a student-only parking lot, there would have been many more trucks and maybe more out of state. Also, we only made observations at one time of day. We recorded data during the middle of the day, but maybe in the early morning or late afternoon, there is less students and more faculty, meaning even less trucks or less vehicles all together. A true experiment would record data at several times in the day for several days so that their observations could be more complete. Results Trucks Other Sum Texas 50 299 349 Non-Texas 2 6 8Sum 52 305 357Trucks Other SumTexas 6 42 48 Non-Texas 1 1 2Sum 7 43 50Our results were somewhat surprising because our group found 50 vehicles total and only 7 of them were pickup trucks. There were two out of state vehicles, meaning my hypothesis of 4% out of state vehicles was exactly correct. One of these out of state vehicles was a truck from Florida and the other was a non-truck from Oregon. As we expected, non-truck vehicles from Texas made up the majority with 42 out of 50 vehicles. Our research was a microcosm of what the entire class observed. The percentage of trucks was very similar, with us finding 12% trucks and the class finding 14% trucks. The class also found 8 out of state vehicles out of a total of 357 vehicles. Discussion/ConclusionI believe that some of our results were solely dependent on factors such as the parking lotwe observed and the time of day. Our parking lot probably had less trucks because it also held faculty vehicles, which tend to be SUVs and family cars. The parking lot we analyzed was also close to the Meteorology building, meaning that the people who parked there specifically have more environmentally-friendly, smaller cars. The Texas A&M Student Report also reported that about 6.5% of students are U.S. residents from out of state (Dars.tamu.edu, 2018). Our results showed that 4% of the vehicles in our parking lot were out of state. This means that our parking lot could be representative of all the vehicles on campus, but there are other factors involved. My conclusion is that our findings are a good beginning, but overall, they are an incomplete picture. I believe that if we had observed vehicles in the parking garages where students are, we would have seen many more trucks and possibly more out of state cars. Our hypothesis and estimates ended up


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