Testing a Theory

Long, long time ago in elementary school I did a science experiment involving beef jerky. It was on photosynthesis and dehydration. I prepared the same amount of sliced beef in an actual food dehydrator and the other set of sliced beef in an outside container of some sort and let them both dehydrate and see which one would be more efficient. Research as a 5th grader was quite simple and very limited for me at the moment so I really had to pull out all the stops, there was no such thing as “Google” or even for that matter internet. So I did what every little child should do when the encounter an intelligent problem, I went to the library. I looked for newspaper clips on the subject and got as many photosynthesis and dehydration books my little body could possibly handle and ACTUALLY read them all and used everything in that research into my science project.

Now, I would have to be quite honest and explain that not many psychologists might have researched this subject, but I bet they all like jerky. Psychologists use archival research which uses existing data, such as census document, college records, and newspaper listings which is exactly what I did. If the internet was around back then well by all means it would have probably been much easier.

If given another opportunity to do this all matters on what time area it would be in, if I had to do it all over again years ago I really wouldn’t do it over again with the exception of where I dehydrated the meat, being in Arizona it was quite easy because 300 out of the 365 days here are sunny, I would just take my research to desolate areas like Alaska, and if I had to re do it now a days I would utilize the internet much more.