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Ask a Question
The scientific method begins with a question about something you observe: who, what, when, where or why? It must be measurable. -
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scientific method
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Do Background Research
Discover what the best way to answer your question is. Find out if anyone else has researched this before and how did they do it. Don't repeat someone elses mistakes. Go to the library, look on the internet. Go to Useful Links for suggestions on doing oline research.
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Create a Bibliography
Create a bibliography as you research, listing all sources you are going to use in your experiment for when you report your results. Make a list of all these sources putting them in APA format. Go to Useful Links for an internet tool to help you with the proper format such as Knight Cite. If you copy text from one of your sources, then place it in quotation marks in addition to following it with a citation. Avoid plagiarism! Do not copy another person's work and call iit your own. -
Construct a Hypothesis
This is an educated guess about how something works. "If _(I do this), then this____ (will happen)." "If/then" must be measurable variables. -
Plan your experiment
Make a step by step list of everything you will do in your experiment. How will you change one variable keeping the other variable the same? How will you measure the change in the second variable. Keeping a record of your experiment will enable you to repeat the experiment in the exact same way to be certain that the results are accurate. -
Test the Hypothesis/Experiment
Keeping one variable the same, change the other and see what happens. Record what changes you measured. Do this more than once to be sure the first result isn't an accident. -
Repeat your experiment
Following your plan, repeat the experiment. Record the changes you observed and compare them to the changes in the first experiment. Are they the same? A good experiment enables someone else to perform the same experiment to verify your results. -
Do it again!
Repeating an experiment at least three times ensures that your results are consistant, not just an accident. -
Analyze your results.
Take time to review the results from all three experiments. Did you find an answer to your question? Was it the answer you were expecting? Was you hypothesis correct or incorrect? -
Report your Results
Tell us what happened. How did you conduct your experiment? What was your question? Your hypothesis? Did you expect a different result? or did you get the answer you thought you'd get? -
Draw a Conclusion
Is your hypothesis correct? Did your experiment answer your question?