Name ________________________

		A project in Rates of Change 50 points test points and 100 project points
[Data Collection Log] [Report Outline] [Excel Spreadsheet] [Daily Lab Schedule] [Evaluation Sheet] [Project Description] Evaluation Sheet] [Project Description]

This project will give you a great opportunity to grow your own creature and gain information about similarity and rates of change. It will require you to collect FOUR days of data about your creature. You will be growing it and then shrinking it back. You will be using a spreadsheet (EXCEL) and a word processor (MS WORD) to generate your final report that will include charts and graphs of your data.

Grow your creature for a minimum of 48 hours. If it has failed to grow for the last three hours, take it out of the water and begin the shrinking process. If continues to grow, grow it for at least 55 hours.  You can also choose to grow a second creature to see if it will continue to grow past the mandatory 48 hour growing period.

Data (to the nearest tenth of a cm) must be collected on the log sheets that have been provided and should take place NO CLOSER THAN ONE HOUR apart – preferably every one to two hours.   The longest dimension is length, the width is from the top to the bottom of the surface, and the thickness can be measured with a pin through the thickest part of the fish.

Throughout the data collection period, you are to make a minimum of 5 tracings of your creature while it is growing. You should trace it before you begin, three times while it is growing, and when you take out of the water.  If you choose to take data while shrinking it, trace it three times while it is shrinking.   When you take it out of the water to shrink it, dry it off, and trace it and label it with the day and time, the age of the creature, its length, its width, and it’s thickness. Then attach these drawings to your final report.

For 15 points (out of 25) on the data collection part of this project, you must have at least 8 data measurements per day on each of days 1, 2, 3, and 4 - each must be taken no closer than 1 hour apart.

For 20 points on the data collection part of this project, you must have at least 10 data measurements per day on days 1, 2, 3, and 4 – each must be taken no closer than 1 hour apart.

For 25 points on the data collection part of the project, you must have at least 12 data measurements per day on days 1, 2, 3, and 4 – each must be taken no closer than 1 hour apart.

By the end of the second day back from winter break,

• You will have emailed (or hand in a typed copy of) your hypothesis of what you think the class data will look like, based on what you find out from your data. (powelln@district87.org ) 
• You will create excel spreadsheets – a growing log excel spreadsheet and a shrinking log spreadsheet (extra credit) for your creature, each must have a minimum of 48 hours of data
• You will use Excel to interpolate your data (assume that the growth between measurements is linear) for every hour on your log sheet .
• You will save your data and it will be either saved it to a shared drive for everyone in the class to access or you will email it (the excel spreadsheet files attachment) to me at powelln@district87.org and then burned to a CD and each of you will get a copy.

You will graph your data and also make additional graphs of the entire class data -collected by you and your classmates. Your report should follow the form on your report outline sheet and evaluation sheet.