Next you will design a lab to investigate the relationship between resistance and current. You will need to be thoughtful in designing this lab to be sure you get a quantity and quality of data that you can trust. All labs have errors, but no errors should be preventable.

With your group, discuss your plan for investigating this relationship. Beyond knowing what the independent and dependent variables are, you should also think about:

• What variable(s) will you control?
• How many times will you change the independent variable?
• How will you quantitatively change the independent variable?
• How will you measure the dependent variable each time you change the independent variable?
• Once you have your data, how will you communicate it to others? (Hint: A data table is never the easiest way for a reader to determine the relationship between two variables.)

Your teacher will let you know how much time you have to discuss this lab procedure. Once you are confident about the procedure you have written down, call your teacher over to check. Your teacher will give you the go ahead to begin the lab.

Note: Your teacher may need to review with you how to tell the resistance of each resistor based on the colored bands.