Year 8 Science 2020-2021 Diagnostic Evaluation

Objective 4 Experimental Investigation

CHICKEN FARMING AND THE SCIENTIFIC PROCESS - JOHN WANTS MORE EGGS

Farmer John thought that his chickens were not producing enough eggs, so he decided to experiment
with different sorts of chicken food, to find out which resulted in more eggs from his chickens.

John has a huge chicken farm with many thousands of chickens, so it was easy for him to collect 500
chickens, all the same age, with which he could investigate.

He went to the market and bought enough chicken food of these 5 different brands:
A. Cheepychick
B. Eggsaneggsaneggs
C. Grade 1 Mix for chickens
D. Maxieggs
E. Chicken Chop

John divided the 500 chickens into 5 groups of 100 chickens, and put them into 5 identical buildings,
each with the same area of 20 m2. All the building except one had an ambient temperature of 19°c.
Unfortunately the building in which the chickens were given ChickenChop was on the outside of the
farm and the temperature could not be controlled properly and so never went above 15°c. He fed each
group of 100 chickens with just one of the chicken foods and also allowed the chickens to drink as
much water as they required. He fed them this way for one month, counting the total number of eggs
which were produced by the 100 chickens in each building.

Before he started the investigation, he expected that Maxieggs chicken food would be the food which
resulted in most eggs, because it was the most expensive food and was recommended to him by his
friend, Charles.

These are the results which John Total number of

collected after 1 month: eggs collected in 30
Brand of Chicken food
days, from 100
chickens
Cheepychick 3,500
Eggsaneggsaneggs 3,950
Grade 1 mix for chickens 4,944
Maxieggs 4,100
Chicken Chop 2,405
QUESTIONS
1. What OBSERVATIONS did Farmer John make, which led him to decide to do an
investigation into the different chicken foods?
2. What QUESTION did John ask himself, which he wanted answered?
3. John tested a HYPOTHESIS. What was his hypothesis?
4. What do you think was the CONCLUSION which Farmer John made after looking at the
results?
5. What was his JUSTIFICATION for making that conclusion?
6. After finishing, John made an evaluation of his investigation.
i. Write one error in his investigation which meant it was not a FAIR TEST.
ii. Write how you would change the investigation in order to correct that error.
8. In this investigation, which was:
i. The INDEPENDENT VARIABLE?
ii. The DEPENDENT VARIABLE?
9. And which were three CONTROLLED VARIABLES?