PRESENTATION OUTLINE
STEPS
- Ask a question
- Do background research
- Construct a hypothesis
- Test your hypothesis by doing an experiment
- Analyze your data and draw a conclusion
- Communicate your results
Ask a question
The best questions come from your personal observations, have you heard or seen something that you wonder about? The first step in the scientific method is observation. Best questions are the ones that appeal to you, the ones you are really interested in finding the answer to. Ask yourself important questions before you go any further with your project.
Research
Suppose you observe that your car won't start. Your question is why wont it start? Then you have to start doing your research on it like look online or in a manual.
Hypothesis
A hypothesis is a possible explanation for the phenomenon you observed. It is more than a guess though, because it's based upon a review of existing knowledge. An educated guess.
Design an experiment that will either confirm or fail to confirm the hypothesis. The experiment should be designed to try to isolate the phenomenon and the proposed cause. In other words, it should be controlled.
Analyze results
Hypothesis testing is simply a way to collect data that will help you either confirm or fail to confirm your hypothesis. If your car starts when you add gas, your analysis is pretty simple--your hypothesis was confirmed. In more complicated tests, however, you may not be able to figure out whether your hypothesis is confirmed without first spending considerable time looking at the data you gathered in your hypothesis testing
Report your results
Scientists generally report the results of their research in scientific journals or in papers at conferences. They report not only the results but also their methodology and any problems or questions that arose during their hypothesis testing. Reporting your findings enables others to build upon them.
