The steps that scientists use to answer questions and solve problems. This procedure is quite fundamental in Science, but is also quite easy to follow. There are a lot of debates going on about how many steps they are in the scientific method (such as this one and several more). This page, in the author's POV, will state the 6 steps of the Scientific Method, and additional tidbits.
They are some debates as to whether research comes before/after asking a question |
Remember! Researching --> Ask Question. Turn the question into a hypothesis. What is a hypothesis? Let's consult our dictionary with the definition of hypothesis:
a mere assumption or guess.
And now... with a scientific definition from sciencebuddies.org, we get:
A hypothesis is a tentative, testable answer to a scientific question. Once a scientist has a scientific question she is interested in, the scientist reads up to find out what is already known on the topic. Then she uses that information to form a tentative answer to her scientific question. Sometimes people refer to the tentative answer as "an educated guess."
Alright, seems simple, eh? Basically... a hypothesis is an educated guess, which is a scientific assumption (which will be tested) to a question. Usually, hypothesis's are characterized as "If, then" statements.
Such as: "If the plant is put into the closet, while the rest of the plants are outside, then the plant in the closet is not going to grow as well as the other plants".
But.. a hypothesis can be as simple as "How does acid rain affect plant growth?".
Research method for testing different assumptions (hypotheses) by trial and error under conditions constructed and controlled by the researcher.