Sunday, September 16, 2012

Honors Biology License Plate Project (Of Scary Fun)



Background information/ Observations:
Red= 2 plates required, Blue= back plate, Pink= rear plate for some passenger vehicles
Some cars dont have any place for plates, especially expensive cars and sports cars.
We know that sit down restaurants are more costly to eat at, and in turn the cars there will probably be more expensive because the people have more money than fast food goers.

Question- Will more cars have one license plate at sit-down restaurants than at fast food restaurants?

Hypothesis- More cars will have one license plate at the sit down restaurants than at the fast food restaurants.

Prediction- If there are more one plated vehicles at the sit-down restaurants then the cars at the sit-down restaurants are probably more expensive than the ones at the fast food restaurants.

Experimental Set-Up
Step One- VanWinkle, Jerger, Wells will be traveling to McDonalds, Wendy's, and Taco Bell on Sunday September 9, 2012.

Step Two- We will then look at all the vehicles in their parking lots and mark down in tallies which ones have one and which ones have two license plates.

Step Three- Get drinks, this is some serious work!

Step Four- We will travel to Olive Garden, then O'Charlie's and finally Applebee's, collecting data in the same way listed above, by tallies.

Step Five- We will add up the total amount of fast food cars with one plate and the total number of sit-down cars with one plate. Then, compare results. (By this step Jordan will have joined us.)



 total for 1: 29 cars

total for 1: 41 cars

Conclusions: 
There were more one plated cars at sit down restaurants than at fast food restaurants. Our hypothesis was true this time, but it would need to be tested a lot to make a theory. We think our prediction is true.

Errors?:
It could be possible to count one car more than once. The people in the parking lots may have not been customers of the restaurants, just parking there or working there. 

Variables that could change outcome: 
One restaurant may be more popular than the other. Special sales going on that day at different restaurants on different days. Time of day. Weekend vs. Weekday.

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