f. Analysis

The data from our experiments, as a whole, was very varied. There was no pattern or trend present in most of the data. We concluded that this was because this lab had much human error to account for. There were many little things that happened or could have happened while this lab was taking place that could affect the rate of dissolved oxygen. The first thing could be that because the samples were sitting out for a few days, the first set of data taken on the first day could have a smaller dissolved oxygen count because it wasn’t sitting out as long as a sample taken from the same bucket 3 days later. Also, while retrieving the samples with the bottle, different teams could have been adding more oxygen to the sample accidentally. Also little things like a space bubble in the bottle, or not capping the bottle properly can lead to error in the lab.

A pattern that we did notice was in the beach water, for the most part, the dissolved oxygen decreases as the light decreased.

Another factor that can affect this lab is the different types of organisms not only in each environment, but also in each of the individual samples. If one sample happens to contain more microorganisms than another, there could be less dissolved oxygen in that particular sample for that group than another group that tested the same water sample and happened to have fewer microorganisms. The same goes for plant organisms, only the affect on dissolved oxygen would be opposite, the more plants the more oxygen.