Materials and Methods

 

The premise underlying your materials and methods section should be that someone should be able to use it to exactly duplicate your experiment and obtain the same or very similar results without any additional assistance. Therefore, this part of your experiment should be an exact account of what was done, the sequence of steps, the apparatus and materials used, and the way in which data were obtained and recorded (5: 121-123).

For our Volta pile experiment, we might list the materials as follows:

Materials:

--one flask

--one strip of copper

--one strip of zinc

--a solution of water and lemon juice

--a voltmeter

--two cables with alligator clips

Our methods part might be as follows:

Methods:

We poured the acid solution into the flask. We arranged the strips of copper and zinc so that they were both suspended in the solution and were not touching each other, following the arrangement shown in the diagram. We connected one cable to the copper strip with an alligator clip, and we connected the other end of this cable with an alligator clip to the negative terminal of the voltmeter. We connected the other cable to the zinc strip with an alligator clip, and we connected the other end of this cable with an alligator clip to the positive terminal of the voltmeter.