The Scientific Method
OR ...
Bill Nye
Over centuries, humans came up with a way for answering questions and proving answers, called the scientific method. A good question is just the beginning. What’s so great about the scientific method? Once you learn how it works, you can use it to help solve just about any problem.
Do-it-yourself science involves a question, observations, a hypothesis, and experimentation. You have probably come up with questions after you noticed something unusual. For instance, why do fingers get all pruny and wrinkled when I sit in the tub? The observation – shriveled fingertips – is the first step. Do-it-yourself science requires an eye for details surrounding your observations. Collecting related information helps you get to the next step, what scientists call a hypothesis, or “educated” guess. After weighing all the evidence, you hypothesize that your fingers get pruny because of the hot water in the tub. Once you have a hypothesis, it’s time for the fun part – testing it out.
Testing a hypothesis means performing experiments. Not all experiments involve beakers and bubbling machines in elaborate laboratories. Researchers sometimes spend years just developing the tools they need to perform an experiment properly. To test the “prune finger” hypothesis, you experiment by sitting in a tub of hot water and then later in a tub of cold water, keeping track of what happens in a notebook. Making good observations and measurements provides a scientist with a way to compare results and figure out what is going on. The final test of a good experiment is whether or not it can be repeated – if you get different results each time, then there’s more experimenting to do.
The coolest thing about do-it-yourself science is that each experiment seems to create as many questions as answers. There’s something new to discover around every turn.
Do-it-yourself science involves a question, observations, a hypothesis, and experimentation. You have probably come up with questions after you noticed something unusual. For instance, why do fingers get all pruny and wrinkled when I sit in the tub? The observation – shriveled fingertips – is the first step. Do-it-yourself science requires an eye for details surrounding your observations. Collecting related information helps you get to the next step, what scientists call a hypothesis, or “educated” guess. After weighing all the evidence, you hypothesize that your fingers get pruny because of the hot water in the tub. Once you have a hypothesis, it’s time for the fun part – testing it out.
Testing a hypothesis means performing experiments. Not all experiments involve beakers and bubbling machines in elaborate laboratories. Researchers sometimes spend years just developing the tools they need to perform an experiment properly. To test the “prune finger” hypothesis, you experiment by sitting in a tub of hot water and then later in a tub of cold water, keeping track of what happens in a notebook. Making good observations and measurements provides a scientist with a way to compare results and figure out what is going on. The final test of a good experiment is whether or not it can be repeated – if you get different results each time, then there’s more experimenting to do.
The coolest thing about do-it-yourself science is that each experiment seems to create as many questions as answers. There’s something new to discover around every turn.
Steps of The Scientific Method
The Question
Your science fair project starts with a question. This might be based on an observation you have made or a particular topic that interests you. Think what you hope to discover during your investigation, what question would you like to answer? Your question needs to be about something you can measure and will typically start with words such as what, when, where, how or why.
Background Research
Talk to your science teacher and use resources such as books and the Internet to perform background research on your question. Gathering information now will help prepare you for the next step in the Scientific Method.
Hypothesis
Using your background research and current knowledge, make an educated guess that answers your question. Your hypothesis should be a simple statement that expresses what you think will happen.
Experiment
Create a step by step procedure and conduct an experiment that tests your hypothesis. The experiment should be a fair test that changes only one variable at a time while keeping everything else the same. Repeat the experiment a number of times to ensure your original results weren’t an accident.
Data
Collect data and record the progress of your experiment. Document your results with detailed measurements, descriptions and observations in the form of notes, journal entries, photos, charts and graphs.
Observations
Describe the observations you made during your experiment. Include information that could have affected your results such as errors, environmental factors and unexpected surprises.
Conclusions
Analyze the data you collected and summarize your results in written form. Use your analysis to answer your original question, do the results of your experiment support or oppose your hypothesis?
Communication/Presentation
Present your findings in an appropriate form, whether it’s a final report for a scientific journal, a poster for school or a display board for a science fair competition.
Try it out...
Based on the information presented above, how well did these experiments follow the scientific method. Explain your answer.
Pick one the experiments below to try at home... write up your results - use the scientific method as your guide.
