A student was instructed to carry out an experiment that illustrates the law
of conservation of mass. The teacher indicated that the experiment should
be carried out three times. The student plans to report the average of the
three results. What can the student do to maximize the reliability of the data
collected?
Report the results that came closest to the class average.
Perform each of the trials on different days.
Conduct each trial using the same balance.
Report the average of the two most similar values only.