Horrible Science: Professor D Tail

When working scientifically, it is important to write down everything that you did accurately and in enough detail.

It's like when writing a recipe for baking a cake, if you just say 'add a splash of this or a dollop of that', you are not using accurate measurements and will not get the same product or end results every time.

…And you certainly won't get a tasty cake.

It's also important to:

• use the correct units of measurement.

For example, 30l is not the same as 30ml.

• note things down exactly.

This is so if you or someone else repeats the experiment and something goes wrong or the end result is slightly different, you can work out why!

By writing everything down accurately, you can also repeat the same experiment with nearly 100% accuracy.

Scientists repeat their experiments to see if they get similar results each time.

This helps them to note that their results are precise if they are all similarly grouped together.

Repeating experiments helps scientists to spot any errors or anomalies, which means unexpected results.

If all results are precise once the experiment has been repeated, this gives validity to the results and makes them reliable.

Horrible Science fact

Accurate and precise mean different things.

Accurate measurements are close to what they should be.

Precise measurements are those that have been repeated and are very similar.

You can find out more about the differences here.