Question: how long does it take to complete one experiment

anon answered on 16 Mar 2015:

It really depends on the experiment or the question you are trying to ask. For example if you want to find out whether the same weight of potato is cooked faster by boiling water if it is chopped into little pieces or left in large chunks, then it wont take very long at all. It might take a bit longer if you want to make sure that your results are repeatable and consistent – which means you would do that same experiment a few times and compare your results. But it still wouldn’t take very long.

But some studies can take a very long time like waiting to see how something changes over a long period of time this can be days, weeks, years, even decades! Or to collect as much information as possible you might need to keep on collecting the information by experimenting for months. Or you might have to wait for something to happen before you can start experimenting properly – like for your robot/probe to travel hundreds of thousands of miles to land on the comet you’re trying to learn about or the right time of year for frogs to be laying their eggs. Sometimes you have to be really patient! Some scientists work on the same thing for much of their scientific career!