Scientific methods

What are the steps of the scientific method?

• There are many different processes that scientists use. There isn’t just ONE correct way to do the scientific method. The steps we will learn are a pattern that scientists tend to use, but they are not the only way to do science.

Scientific method– Observing– Questioning– Identifying a

problem

Scientific method

– Researching

Scientific method

– Forming a hypothesis

Scientific method – form a hypothesis

• What is a hypothesis?– Opinion (tentative)– Hypothesis– Theory– Law– Fact

Scientific method

– experimenting

Scientific method - Experiment

• A Variable is something that could change in your experiment.

Scientific method - Experiment

• The Independent variable is the factor in the experiment that is changed on purpose.

• The independent variable can also be called the manipulated variable.

• A Controlled experiment only has one independent variable.

Scientific method - Experiment

• The dependent variable is that factor that responds to the change you made in the independent variable. (It’s the thing that changes when you changed something else.)

• The dependent variable is also called a responding variable.

Scientific method - Experiment

• Controlled Variables are characteristics that are kept the same in all trials. (Things that could change, but you make sure they don’t.)

• Controlled variables are also called Constants.

Scientific Method

• Modeling

Scientific method

– Collecting and analyzing data

Scientific method

– Forming conclusions• (Was your hypothesis

correct?)

“Understanding is always a journey, never

a destination.Knowledge begets

questions, which beget new technology, which

provides answers-which in turn beget questions. This is the implacable carousel of research.”

- Richard Fortey