Ta-daaaaaaaaaa!! The Measurement Chamber!! I designed and built this device to measure the luminance from Luminol and Bluestar. I needed a way to keep all other light sources in the room out, so I -- put a cardboard box on its side and lined it with black plastic. The light sensor fits through a hole in the top of the box and it is taped so it hangs 14cm from the drywall square at the bottom. The sensor kept hanging crooked, so I tied a piece of thread to the cord and taped it to the side of the box to keep it straight. I made an extra flap for the lid so no light gets in when I close the box. To use the chamber, bloostained drywall squares are sprayed with Luminol and Bluestar and put in the box. I quickly closed the box and click LoggerPro software on my laptop which is attached to the light sensor. LoggerPro was set to take luminance readings every second for 30 seconds (how long the glow lasts).

Before scientists start experiments, they practice their procedure. This is called a "Trial Run." I had to do 2 Trial Runs to get my experiment right. In the first Trial Run, I cut up drywall, put the synthetic blood on it and tried to clean it off with my 5 different cleaning methods. The cleaning didn't work! The drywall looked all dark and stained. I thought about what I did wrong, and then I realized that drywall in a house is covered with PAINT and I was using plain drywall right from the store. So, in Trial Run #2, I painted the drywall first and it cleaned off great. I learned that it is really important to make sure that your experiment will work first before you run it or your results won't meaning anything. And you might end up coming to a conclusion that was scientifically wrong and it might hurt people.

Scientists have to REPEAT their work, so I did my entire experiment 5 times! It is important to repeat the experiment to make sure that your results didn't just happen by chance. Also, you may make a mistake in one trial which would give you bad results. After 5 trials, I had 150 luminace readings for each sample. That is a lot of data!
In science, there is a difference between how the numbers look, and what they really mean. The difference in values has to be so big that it is called "statistically significant." This means the results could not have happened by accident, and the difference between the data is important for scientific purposes. To calculate statistical significance, I used a software program called "StatCrunch." I transferred my luminance readings from Logger Pro into Excel, and then I downloaded them into StatCrunch.