Researchers are exploring alternative methods for preventing frost damage to orchards. It is known that the mean soil heat flux for plots covered only with grass is µ 0 = 29 units. An alternative...

Researchers are exploring alternative methods for preventing frost damage to orchards. It is known that the mean soil heat flux for plots covered only with grass is µ₀
= 29 units. An alternative method is to use coal dust cover.

(a) Heat flux measurements of 8 plots covered with coal dust yielded
 = 30.79 and S = 6.53. Test the hypothesis H₀
: µ = 29 vs H_a
: µ > 29 at α = 0.05, and report the p-value (either exactly, using R, or approximately, using Table A.4).

(b) What assumption(s) underlie the validity of the above test?