What is it worth?

Before you apply the IB assessment rubric one square at a time, read these fourteen general comments.

1 There are two people listed as authors - IB does not have group grades.

2 The original title was awful. Do not joke with the examiner. He has no sense of humour.

3 We could have had a photograph of Nathan and his mother at church instead of a cow. That would at least have told us something.

4 The abstract is not specific enough. There is no focussed research question.

5 The barely hidden hypothesis is that ...... "The measurements for these particular objects will be consistent with the statements found in the text book." Stated this way the hypothesis is reasonable, but of little value.

6 The repeated use of we is not good. The usual style for scientific writing is past tense, passive voice.

7 There is no evidence of planning other than to get the assignment done as painlessly as possible.

8 There is a reported attempt to find the likely errors by repeating one measurement several times to find half the range but there are no measured values listed anywhere or displayed on graphs.

9 There are no diagrams to define symbols.

10 There are no tables of actual measurements with errors.

11 The original work had no proper symbols for the two coefficients.

12 The foumula quoted for acceleration is correct if the distance was 1.00 meters. Nowhere is this stated.

13 The evaluation is meaningless without reported data.

14 There is no evidence of collaboration ......... to find out what had in fact gone wrong.

15 Finally, the whole thing is not written in the passive voice.

 

The original lab can/could be found on the web at .........