IB Prescribed practicals

Included in the “Applications and skills” section of the guide is a series of practicals that students must cover either in a laboratory environment or as a simulation. The skills and general techniques associated with these common practicals may be assessed as part of the external assessment. The list of required practicals for physics includes:

Topic 2.1 - Determining the acceleration of free-fall

The data collected: 

• includes sufficient (a min of 5 data points x 3 trials) relevant quantitative and qualitative raw data that could support a detailed and valid conclusion to the research question. 

• Appropriate and sufficient data processing is carried out with the accuracy required to enable a conclusion to the research question to be drawn that is fully consistent with the experimental data. 

• Data processing that determines the relationship between variables by examining the trend-line of a graph, not simply performing calculations on each data point. 

• The processed data is correctly interpreted so that a completely valid and detailed conclusion to the research question can be deduced.

• The focus of this summative practical report will focus on Error analysis