Practical Investigation

The Practical Investigation (AS91168) is a 4-credit internal — the only Level 2 Physics standard where you design the experiment. Your teacher sets or approves a context (a pendulum, a bouncing ball, a spring, a circuit — anything where one variable depends on another in a non-linear way), and you plan, carry out, and analyse an investigation that finds the mathematical relationship between two variables.

There's no fixed "content" to learn here — instead there's a method to master:

• Plan a fair test with a clear independent and dependent variable.
• Collect enough reliable, repeated data across a sensible range.
• Linearise the non-linear relationship so you can find it from a straight-line graph.
• Quantify uncertainty in your data and your final result.
• Evaluate how valid and reliable your investigation was.

Every page below explains one part of that method, with a worked example using a common practice context. Your own write-up will use your own data — the structure of good reasoning is what stays the same.