The Scientific Method

♫A Way to Solve a Problem♫

WHAT IS THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD?

• It is the steps someone takes to identify a question, develop a hypothesis, design and carry out steps or procedures to test the hypothesis, and document observations and findings to share with someone else.• In simple words, it’s a way to solve a

problem.

The Scientific Method involves a series of steps that are used to

investigate a natural

occurrence.

The scientific method consists of five steps:

Observation Hypothesis Experiment

Theory or law Prediction

OBSERVATION The first process in the scientific method

involves the observation of a phenomenon, event, or “problem.”

The discovery of such a phenomenon may occur due to an interest on the observer’s part, a suggestion or assignment, or it may be an unknown that one wishes to resolve.

The observer has to collect data about the problem. The data may be drawn from a simple observation.

OBSERVATION

Observation leads to a question that needs to be answered to satisfy human curiosity about the observation, such as why or how this event happened or what it is like.

Scientific questions need to be answerable and lead to the formation of a hypothesis about the problem.

HYPOTHESISTo answer a question, a hypothesis will be formed.

This is an educated guess to answer the question regarding the problem. A scientific hypothesis has to be testable. In other words, there must be a way to try to make the hypothesis fail. If this hypothesis is correct, we should be able to confirm it by testing. This testing of the hypothesis is called the experiment.

EXPERIMENT An experiment is a controlled procedure carried out to discover, test, or demonstrate something.

An experiment is performed to confirm that the hypothesis is valid. If the results of the experiment do not support the hypothesis, the experimental technique must be checked to make sure that the experiment was really measuring that aspect of nature that it was supposed to measure.

EXPERIMENTIf nothing wrong is found with the experimental technique, and the results still contradict the hypothesis, then the original hypothesis must be modified.

Another experiment is then made to test the modified hypothesis. The hypothesis can be modified and experiments redesigned as often as necessary until the hypothesis is validated.

THEORYFinally, success: the experimental results confirm that the hypothesis is correct. The hypothesis now becomes a new theory about some specific aspect of nature, a scientifically acceptable general principle based on observed facts. After a careful analysis of the new theory, a prediction about some presently unknown aspect of nature can be made.

PREDICTIONIs the prediction correct? To answer that question, the prediction must be tested by performing a new experiment. If the new experiment does not agree with the prediction, then the theory is not as general as originally thought.

Perhaps it is only a special case of some other more general model of nature. The theory must now be modified to conform to the negative results of the experiment.

PREDICTIONThe modified theory is then analyzed to obtain a new prediction, which is then tested by a new experiment. If the new experiment confirms the prediction, then there is reasonable confidence that this theory of nature is correct. This process of prediction and experiment continues many times. As more and more predictions are confirmed by experiment, indicates that a good model of the way nature works has been developed. At this point, the theory can be called a law of physics.

This method of scientific reasoning demonstrates that the establishment of any theory is based on experiment. In fact, the success of physics lies in this agreement between theoretical models of the natural world and their experimental confirmation in the laboratory. A particular model of nature may be a great intellectual achievement but, if it does not agree with physical reality, then, from the point of view of physics, that hypothesis is useless. Only hypotheses that can be tested by experiment are relevant in the study of physics.

Observation of the Nature

Hypothesis

Experiment

Prediction

Theory

Lack of agreement

Positive ResultTest Prediction by Experiment

Negative ResultModify the Theory