Aquasol Experimental Design: Weaknesses

A weakness in this experimental design is the manual dilution of the Aquasol concentrations. This is because, if a random error were to occur, and the diluted Aquasol concentration does not result in the desired concentration, the validity, reliability, and precision of the results is majorly decreased. Whereas if the Aquasol concentrations were already previously diluted in a lab by professionals, or were bought in the correct concentrations, the reliability, validity, and precision of the results would have been have been significantly better. Another weakness in this experimental design was adding the Aquasol solutions to the samples using a spray bottle. This is because the amount of the solution being applied to the petri dishes cannot be controlled, and the volume of solution in each spray would have changed each time, as the power exerted on the spray and the amount of solution expelled by the nozzle varied. …show more content…
Moreover, manually measuring the shoot heights was another weakness in the experimental design, as the experimenter may forget the shoots that they had already measured, and thus, measure one shoot multiple times, whilst not measuring other shoots that have not yet been measured. This would result in the data becoming invalid, unreliable, and imprecise. A strength of this experimental design lies in the fact that a large sample size was used. This is beneficial, as having a large sample size reduces the effects of random errors, and allows the results to be more consistent, and thus, more