The Scientific Method

If you are a student who is looking for some GREAT scientific experiments to do at home, you have come to the right place! If you are a teacher looking for some GREAT enrichment or extra credit activities for your students, YOU'VE come to the right place!

What we have here are some activites that kids can do at home for their own enjoyment or to amaze and confuse their parents, grandparents, brothers and sisters.

 

These activites are meant to be done with some degree of parent supervision depending on the age and responsibility level of the participants. But what about the SCIENTIFIC METHOD?

Well, this is just a name science folks give to how they go about solving problems and learning about the world around them. Try a few of these experiments and see if you don't like them. Pretty soon, whether ot not you know it, you will be thinking and learning like a science guy or girl.

The steps of the scientific method go pretty much like this:

  • First, find a problem you would like to solve or something you would like to learn about. Write down the problem in the form of a question.
  • Learn what you can about that problem. You do this by asking questions, perhaps reading, digging around on the Internet, and maybe THINKING!
  • Next, you come up with some kind of guess which you think answers the question. (Science folks call this guess a hypothesis.)
  • Then (and here's the fun part) you come up with some experiments to test your guess. Then you do the experiment.
  • After you do the experiment, you look at how it came out. What were your results? How did it work? Take notes. Re-do the experiment making changes you think will make it work better.
  • Finally, when you feel you have found an aswer to your question, you have reached your conclusion!

The short version of the scientific method looks like this: Click here for an example.

  • State the problem in the form of a question.
  • Gather information
  • Make a hypothesis.
  • Experiment to test your hypothesis.
  • Collect and analyze your results.
  • State a conclusion.

Created for the NTEP II by the Sandia/CA Education Partnerships and Fermilab LInC . Hosted by Pleasanton Unified School District at H.P. Mohr Elementary School.
 
Created by the Sandia/CA LInCing to SUPER! Summer '2000 Team of: Gary Beebout (Somerset Middle School, Modesto, CA), Dave Menshew (Mark Twain Jr. High School, Modesto CA). Page Owner: Bill Britton   Acknowledgment and Disclaimer