Course Sample for Our Introduction to Physics Homeschool Science Course
Scientific Method
This lesson we’re going to talk about the scientific method. The scientific method is a series of 5 steps that scientists use to do research. But, honestly, you use it every day too!
The five steps are Observation, Hypothesis, Test, Collect Data, and Report Results. That sounds pretty complicated but don’t worry, they are just big words. Let me tell you what these words mean and then we’ll play with them.
Observation means what do you see, or hear, or smell, or feel. What is it that you’re looking at? Is that what it usually does? Is that what it did last time? What would happen if you tried something different with it? Observation is the beginning of scientific research. You have to see or touch or hear something before you can start to do stuff with it right?
Once you observe something, you can then form a hypothesis. All hypothesis really means is “guess”. Hypothesis is an educated guess. Tonight at dinner, when someone asks you “Do you want peas or carrots?” Say, “I hypothesize that I would like the carrots.” Everyone will think you’re a genius! Basically you’re saying “I guess that I would like the carrots”. Hypotheses aren’t right or wrong they are just your best guess.
To see if your guess is correct, you need to do the next step in the scientific method, test. The test is just what it sounds like; running experiments to see whether or not your hypothesis is correct. We’ll talk in more detail about tests in the next lesson.
As you do your tests, you need to collect data. That means collecting the numbers, the measurements, the times, the data of the experiment. Once you collect your data, you can take a look at it, or in other words analyze it.
Once you analyze your data you can report your results. That basically means tell someone about it. You can put your data in a chart or a graph or just shout it from the rooftops!
Here’s a great way to remember the 5 steps. Remember the sentence “Orange Hippos Take Classes Regularly”. The first letter in each word of that goofy sentence is the same as the first letter in each step of the scientific method. That’s called a mnemonic device. Make up your own to remember all sorts of stuff.
“Ok, so that’s what the words mean. How do I use that everyday?” Well, I’m glad you asked that question. If you had cereal for breakfast this morning, you did the scientific method. On the table you had a bowl of cereal with no milk in it. As you looked at your dry cereal, you made an observation, “I need milk!” At that point, you made a hypothesis, “There’s milk in the fridge.” You can’t be sure there’s milk in the fridge. Someone might have used it up. It might have gone bad. Aliens may have used it to gas up their milk powered spaceship. You just don’t know! So you have to do a test. What would be a good test to see if there is milk in the fridge?….Open the fridge! Now once you move the week old spaghetti and the green Jell-O (at least you hope it’s Jell-O) out of the way, you can see if there is milk or not. So you collect your data. There is milk or there isn’t milk. Now you can finally report your results. If there is milk you can happily pour it on your cereal. If there isn’t any milk you report your results by shouting, “Hey Mom…We need milk!” Scientific method, not so hard is it?
Now that you have some idea what the scientific method is, let’s do some stuff with it. The first experiment we’re going to do is the Diabolical Diaper Dilemma.
To view a full sample of this course, click here.
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