9. Conclusion

Writing your Conclusion

     The conclusion summarizes, in about one page or less, what you discovered based on your experimental results. The conclusion re-states the hypothesis, and indicates whether the data you have gathered supports your expected outcome. Don't worry if your hypothesis was proved wrong, it's still a valid project! The last section of the conclusion should also include a brief description of future plans based on your findings from this project.

    Your conclusion should wrap up the cause and effect relationship, as well as discuss any unresolved questions, or error analysis of the data. The conclusion should answer the “Problem Question” or explain why it cannot be answered at this time.

The conclusion should also include a generalization or application to explain what happened or be able to apply it to a new area. Generalizations are usually made after repeated trials and are based on expectations from previous experiences. It can be hard to understand the difference between the summarizing statements of the results and a conclusion, but the two are very different.

    Results are the specific data collected during the experiment. These results are then made into summarizing statements (see below). The conclusion is what you learned from doing the experiment, and what the results mean. You might also think of the conclusion as a short essay created out of the summarizing statements. In just a few sentences, you need to explain what happened in your experiment and whether, or not, it agreed with your hypothesis. Did your data (the measurements you took) support your hypothesis? If not, that's a result too! It doesn't mean that the experiment didn't work. It is still a valid experiment. You learned something didn't you?

     Also, consider other possible explanations for your results. Did your treatment kill your plants or was it that you left them outside and some insects ate some of the leaves? You're not out to “prove” your hypothesis but to test it. Think more along the lines of “here is what I thought was going to happen and here is what actually happened.” Then go on to explain why you think things happened the way they did.

 

Criteria for Writing a Conclusion:

Hint: Teachers, and science fair judges, like to know that you are thinking beyond the project that you have just completed. It is always a good idea to include a closing paragraph about how you would do this project differently in the future if you were given the time to do so. Another item to include might be if this project brought up any other ideas for future projects. The “BIG IDEA” is that you are showing them how you think scientifically.

Summarizng Statements:

Summary statements should describe the data. Nothing that is not in the data can be included in a summary statement. This statement should also contain as much quantitative information as possible, identifying things like the average, mean, mode or range, as well as the data that seems to lie outside of what was expected. Put simply, the summary state

ments are based on evidence from the data.

 

Criteria for Writing Summary Statements: