1. How scientists answer questions!
Scientific Inquiry
How scientists answer questions!

2. Scientific Inquiry
The many ways that scientists study the natural world and propose explanations based on the evidence they gather

3. Example: Why do flowers have bright colors?
Steps of Inquiry
Step One: Ask a question
Question must be testable
Does not involve personal opinions
Example: Why do flowers have bright colors?

4. Come up with your own “testable” question. It can be about ANYTHING.
Which of these questions can be answered by inquiry?
Is football a better sport then baseball?
Does running make your muscles stronger then swimming?
Which brand of running shoes look the best?
Come up with your own “testable” question. It can be about ANYTHING.

5. Step two: Developing a hypothesis
A possible answer for the question being asked
Based on your prior knowledge and predictions
Must be testable!
Can you do an experiment to find out if you are right or wrong?
A hypothesis should be tested many times before it is accepted as true or false

6. How to write a hypothesis
Sometimes it is written as an “If/Then” statement
Not always possible to write it this way!
Question:
Are students more active after eating lunch?
I think that if students eat lunch, then they will be more active
Can we test this hypothesis?

7. Practice: Does drinking coffee as a teenager make you shorter?
Hypothesis:

8. Step Three: Designing an experiment
HOW will you test your hypothesis?
Develop a PROCEDURE
The steps you follow to test your hypothesis and answer the question
How am I going to answer the question?
Must be detailed and specific

9. Things to know when writing a procedure
Variable:
Something you change or manipulate during an experiment
Example: You are trying to find out if a pond plant grows best in clean or dirty water
Variable: clean or dirty water

10. In order to have a successful experiment you must CONTROL the variables that are NOT being tested
Keep other variables the same throughout the whole experiment
Example: water temperature, where the water comes from, type of pond plant must be the same for the whole experiment.

11. Two types of variables:
Manipulated variable :the thing that is purposely changed in an experiment
Clean or dirty water
Responding variable: The thing that may change in response to the manipulated variable
How well the pond plant grows

12. Controlled Experiment
Only ONE variable should be tested at a time
Testing more then one variable at a time can confuse the results
You can’t test whether pond plants grow better in clean or dirty water AND whether they like warm or cold water
Variables that you keep the same for the experiment are called controlled variables

13. Practice Question: Do worms survive better in wet or dry soil?
Variables:
Manipulated:
Responding:
Other variables to control:

14. Step Four: Results
The data you collect after performing the experiment
Numbers (quantitative observations)
Descriptions (qualitative observations)
Usually organized into a data table and/or graph

15. Analyze Results/Conclusion
Interpret your results.
Must be based on the results from your experiment only
States whether your hypothesis was correct and any further testing that needs to be done

16. Share and Repeat
Scientist must share their results with the scientific community
Repeat – in order to prove a hypothesis you must repeat the same experiment many times.

17. Types of Experiments Statistical experiments
Controlled/laboratory experiments
Field experiments