BEARS IN SPACE

Marshall Jiang
3rd Period

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 Design of Experiment
The purpose of this experiment was to determine how far a GummiBear can be sent into
space by a launcher and the effect on the launch distance by the angle and the position of
the launch pad. An experiment was chosen as the method of study for this question due to
the fact that our group cannot just observe GummiBears launching into space, thus we have
to deliberately create an experiment.

The nature of this experiment dictates us that GummiBears are to be used as the experi-
mental units of this experiment. Our explanatory variables would be the launch angle (de-
termined by the number of books) and the launch position (determined by the position of
the launcher on the ruler). The response variable is the length the GummiBear after it was at
rest from the end of the ruler. Treatment is as follows where top is the top of the ruler and
bottom at the bottom of the ruler:

Group 1: 5 subjects Treatment 1: 1 book, top

Treatment 2: 1 book,
Group 2: 5 subjects
bottom

Group 3: 5 subjects Treatment 3: 3 book, top

Compare length of
Random allocation Treatment 4: 3 book, launch
Group 4: 5 subjects
bottom

Group 5: 5 subjects Treatment 5: 5 book, top

Treatment 6: 5 book,
Group 6: 5 subjects
bottom

Blocking in this experiment was determined to be of no use as our group determined that
outside variables are to their minimal. This was determined due to the fact that most of the
GummiBears looked like they are similar in almost every physical aspect with the exception
of colors and slight variations of the shape.

Blinding is only single blinding as the bears are not conscious of the treatments they are re-
ceiving. The reason it is not double-blind is because the measurer, our group, was fully aware
the treatment the bear received.

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Description of Set Up
First of all, get a pack of GummiBears with at least 30 bears in it too ensure that enough
bears are launched for replication and to ensure control as they should be of the same type.
Create the launcher with two popsicle sticks and two rubber bands by wrapping one rubber
band around both sticks and the other rubber band around only one stick. Now gather 5
“The Practice of Statistics: 3rd Edition” textbooks and a meter stick. Place the meter stick
on the book as shown in the picture below with around half an inch at the top:

Now follow the experiment by random allocating the 30 GummiBears into 6 groups of 5
GummiBears each. To create the treatment group, just stack the textbooks on top of each
other by the amount indicated in the diagram drawn under Design of Experiment. The posi-
tion of the launcher is either at the very top with the back parallel to the back of the ruler,
or at the bottom with the front parallel to the front of the ruler. Now just place the Gum-
miBear on top of the launcher and pull back the the popsicle stick and let go quickly.

When the GummiBear finally stops bouncing around, measure the distance the GummiBear
went by only measuring how far the GummiBear went forward, not sideways, starting from
the end of the ruler at the ground.

This way we could implement, as best as we could, the three principles of experimental de-
sign: control and replication was gained by purchasing the GummiBears in one large pack of
the same types of bears (large amounts of bears and the same types of bears), and random-
ness was gained by the random allocation of the bear into the groups.

Data and Analysis

Table (The format of the column is “number of books: position”; all measurements are in
inches):

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 T R I A L 1 T R I A L 2 T R I A L 3 T R I A L 4 T R I A L 5 AVERAGE
1: Top -5.5 -7.5 -11 -2 -10 -7.2
1: Bottom 18 21 21 17.5 15 18.5
3: Top -3 -7 -6 -3 -8 -5.4
3: Bottom 23 24 26 23 18.5 22.9
5: Top 5 -1 1 -2 0 0.6
5: Bottom 29 33 23 37 17 27.8

Average Distance Launched in Inches

30.0

22.5
Launch Lenght in Inches

15.0

7.5

-7.5

-15.0
1: Top 1: Bottom 3: Top 3: Bottom 5: Top 5: Bottom
Treatment

As you can see by the graph (5 books, top position cannot be seen that well due to a hard
scale), there is clearly a great improvement (statistically significant) if you move from top to
bottom or increase the book height. Accordingly, the maximum distance seems to be with 5
books at the bottom of the meter stick.

I think it is quite reasonable for me to say that there’s a strong correlation between either
increasing the book height, or moving the launcher to the bottom, with increased distance
launched. But the data from two groups of my classmates seems to somewhat disagree with
me.

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Group 2 seems to have more data resembling mine, as the general shape of the bar histo-
gram looks like mine but both Group 1 and Group 2 have the same conclusion in terms of
book angle: the more the better. The placement of the launcher differs though, as Group 2
suggests the bottom of the 5 book one while Group 1 suggests the top of the 5 book stack.

AVERAGE AVERAGE
1: Top 14.6 6.8
1: Bottom 45.5 70.5
3: Top 45.1 18.7
3: Bottom 42.6 68.2
5: Top 65.7 38.3
5: Bottom 60.8 82.3

Group 1 Group 2

Other Group’s Launch Data in Inches

90.0

67.5
Launch Lenght in Inches

45.0

22.5

0
1: Top 1: Bottom 3: Top 3: Bottom 5: Top 5: Bottom
Treatment

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After analyzing the design after doing it, there’s a few places where it could be improved
upon. First of all, the lurking variable of measuring the GummiBear after it bounced proba-
bly proved to be a bit of a bad judgement. The second possible lurking variable is that the
human launcher got better at launching the bears as time went on (this is what happened to
Group 1 as I consulted their group why their data are like that). I would fix the first one by
measuring the distance at the point where the GummiBear first hit the ground and the sec-
ond one could be fix by either creating a mechanical launcher that doesn’t need a human op-
erator or use a new person for every launch.

There was also significant bias in where we measured the distance from as then the launch-
ers from the bottom of the ruler gets a some 35ish inches of advantage over the ones in the
back. To correct this, we could measure the distance from where we launched instead to
correct for this bias.