January 7th

If you survived all of the steps from yesterday, you are well on your way to surviving this class. If not, revisit yesterday's blog to make sure you understand fully how these pages will work. Today we will begin a visit to Scientific Inquiry and the use of the scientific method...

Before we begin, you'll need to understand some vocabulary.

·        Variables are the different factors that can change in an experiment – there are 3 types of variables:

o   Independent variable – the variable that we change or plan to change before we start the experiment. "I" change it.

o   Dependent variable – the variable that we measure, or that is changed by the experiment - it "Depends" on the experiment. (D can also stand for Data)

o   Constant – variables that do not change or that we keep the same through the entire experiment.

·         Controls are the standard experimental result that we are comparing all of our results to.

·         Experiments should be repeated several times to be considered valid results!

Hypotheses are educated predictions or guesses about the outcome of an experiment

Experimental Errors – errors that make the experiment not valid or affect outcomes.

Scientific Theories – an explanation or model backed by results obtained from many tests or experiments

Scientific Law – a rule that describes the behavior of something in nature

Now, let's look at the process. Let's imagine you were getting curious about something you had observed while riding the bus to school. The basic outline for the Scientific Method is this:

You'll notice the order is as follows:

Identify a problem

Gather information (research)

Make Hypothesis

Test the Hypothesis

(experiment)

Analyze the Results

Draw Conclusion

So let's say you had noticed that every time the bus came over the top of a specific hill, the dog that lived at the house at the top of the hill would start barking at the bus. Your initial observation is that the dog doesn't like the bus. You could state the problem this way- "The bus seems to be irritating to the dog which makes him bark. I wonder if it's the color?"
Now that you have created a problem, you could proceed on to something that is testable - so let's think about something to do with the color. You could decide to test