The Scientific Method

1. The Scientific Method

2. What are the Steps? • Take a minute to yourself and write down as many steps of the scientific method as you remember.

3. Steps • Observe • Question • Hypothesis • Experiment • Analyze Results • Conclusion

4. Observation • Using your senses to learn more about a situation. • Usually statements like the car is blue. The solution smells acrid. The bird sounds shrill. The solution tastes acidic. • What are some observations you can make about the following picture?

5. Power of Observation • Watch the clip. • What are some observations you can make? • List all observations you have on a sheet of paper.

6. Formulating Questions • Taking your observations and formulating a list of questions from your observations. • If you observe a bird flying into a window you may ask why would a bird fly into a window.

7. Patterson Film • Using your list of observations formulate some questions from the Patterson Film. • What questions do you have? • Film

8. Formulating a Hypothesis • Proposing an answer to one of the questions you generated. • Must be specific and testable. • Usually a statement about one variable. • Variable-something that can be changed in an experiment.

9. Experiment • Testing the hypothesis. • Must used a controlled experiment. • A controlled experiment tests only one variable.

10. Analyze Results • Look at the results from the experiment. • Put the results into some kind of visual. • Graph, table, chart…etc.

11. Conclusion • Once you have the visual come up with a conclusion from your findings. • Interpreting Results

12. Tomorrow’s Experiment • Reaction Time Lab • Uses a ruler to judge the reaction time of different people. • We will apply the scientific method to judge the best reaction time in the class.