Error Analysis

  Our experiment went fairly well, however one error was that we were only able to use the pollen from three flowers.  Specifically we only had one annual flower's (Winter Pansy) pollen to study; on the other hand we were able to look at the pollen of two perennials.  Essentially this means that we didn't have comparisons for both types of pollen, having another annual pollen would have allowed for better analysis between the pollen of perennial and annual flowers.  With more pollen we also could have had more trials, because we only had one try.  Another issue we had was that the pollen was very hard to see, especially because the flowers were broken into a mess of pieces.  We had to guess where to collect pollen from, and because we could not see the pollen we had to hope we got a good sample.
  We also have to consider that the sample could have been contaminated, the pollen we collected off the flower could have belonged to another plant.  The specimen could have contained pollen carried to it by the wind, or by an animal.  We also could have contaminated the species ourselves; the pollen collecting brushes could have accidentally been mixed between species, crossing the pollen.
Another place for error could have been the SEM stub, we had to focus very closely on a small area on the stub, it was difficult to look around a lot.  We could have also mixed pollen on the stub, due to its small size, the compressed air blowing and the larger size of the pollen collecting brush.
  There is always room for error in an experiment, we did our best to avoid mistakes as much as possible.  If we do this project again we know what we would change in order to make this experiment more accurate.