Scientific Processes 24=25

Explaining the steps of the scientific method

• Explore/observe. You may discover an interesting phenomenon while exploring or observing your environment.
• Ask a question. After observing the phenomenon, ask a question as to why or how it happens.
• Conduct research. Rather than reinventing the wheel, gather as much information as you can through Internet research, scientific journals, other people, and books to gain more knowledge about your question and how it might best be answered.
• Form a hypothesis. State a tentative explanation in a way that allows it to be tested empirically.
• Experiment. Design a protocol to control all variables except for one. This manipulated variable is called the independent variable. The variable affected by the manipulation of the independent variable is called the dependent variable. All other variables are held constant. These are called controlled variables. For example, a hypothesis might state that increasing temperature will increase the rate of a reaction. The independent variable is temperature, and the dependent variable is time. To test the effect of temperature on a reaction rate, you must control the concentration and volume of the reactants and, if the reactants are gases, the volume of the container. When graphing data, the independent variable is plotted on the x-axis, and the dependent variable is plotted on the y-axis. Note: Some experiments benefit from the use of a control experiment, often a parallel setup that uses the same materials but without manipulation of a variable. Such a control helps rule out the possibility that an observed change would have occurred regardless of the manipulation of the variable.
• Analyze data and form conclusions. After collecting data, tabulate or graph them for analysis. Graphing may allow you to see a pattern in your data or the cause-and-effect relationship between the independent and dependent variables. The results may support or refute your hypothesis. If the results refute your original hypothesis, you may revise it and then test this new hypothesis. The process may become a continuous loop of testing and revising hypotheses. Note that refuting a hypothesis is not a failure but a path to further research.
• Report results. Share the results of the experiment. If the supporting evidence is important to the scientific community, it should be shared in an article or a journal. Reporting the findings in a clear way gives other scientists the opportunity to verify your results and to incorporate your findings into general scientific understanding, which may spark new research or take someone else’s research in a different direction. Ongoing attempts to clarify or falsify conclusions help move science toward more accurate explanations of natural reality.