Back to school help! Someone help me with the scientific method?

Question

Can someone please apply steps to scientific methods - What you do everyday. Like brushing your teeth, taking a shower, something easy.

Just give me a few examples, especially the Observation and the conclusion.

I'm back to school, and my brain is like 'durrr'

Thanks!

Answer 1

These are the steps:

1)  Ask a Question

2)  Do Background Research

3)  Construct a Hypothesis

4)  Test Your Hypothesis by Doing an        Experiment

5)  Analyze Your Data and Draw a Conclusion

6)  Communicate Your Results

1) What will stop the empty feeling in my stomach?

2) I will experiment by trying to fill my stomach with two things: water and toast.

3) I hypothesize that the toast will fill my stomach and take away the empty feeling.

4)  I drink the water and wait five minutes.   Then I eat the toast and wait five minutes.

5)  Five minutes after drinking the water, I still had the empty feeling.  It actually increased.  Within two minutes after eating the toast, the empty feeling decreased.  After five minutes, it was gone.  I conclude that solid food is needed to take away the empty feeling in my stomach.

6) I will ask my mother to pop some bread into the toaster for me in the morning so that I don't go to school with an empty feeling in my stomach!

   Now YOU try it!

Answer 2

Dear ;D,

The scientific method is used to solve problems, mostly those that are new to you.  So brushing your teeth, taking a shower or getting the paper aren't the things you would need it for.

An example of using the scientific method in everyday life could be in cooking (does this ingredient work as a substitute for that) or gardening (will this plant grow here?)  The gardening example is, perhaps, the simplest.

Question: Will this plant grow here in my garden?

Hypothesis: This plant will thrive here.

Research: Asking local nurseries and gardeners, checking the hardiness zones either on the internet or through your local county agent.

Test: Stick the plant in the ground.  Water and fertilize according to directions.

Conclusions: The plant grows or it survives but poorly or it dies.

Observations: Was there sufficient or too much sunlight for the plant.  Did it get enough or too much water.  Was the soil rich enough or over-fertilized.  Color of the plant's leaves.  Color and richness of the blossoms.  Final height of the plant as compared to what the label said was standard.

Does that help?

Tiger Toy

Answer 3

1. The Scientific Method, is an ordered list of steps.

1A. The Scientific Method is able to be defined as an ordered list of steps, that when completable, will answer a single question with at least an affirmative or negative response.

1P. In my days in junior high, The Scientific Method was defined as being the following ordered list of steps:

Question, Research, Hypothesis, Experiment, Analysis/Conclusion, Confirmation.

For Example,

Question

Does ethanol-same type of alcohol humans consume to get stupidly silly, and lower their anxiety to being around crowds :-) - have the ability to be an antifreeze for water?

Research

Get online, go to google or wikipedia, and put in ethanol and see if you find anything that would indicate why or why not ethanol would be worth experimenting upon. You can also think back to experiences you've had that would indicate whether or not, and even sometimes how it can be answered. Such as noticing that sometimes when you put a bottle of beer in the freezer, it will freeze, sometimes not. Also, you've heard that if you put a bottle of Vodka in the freezer, it never freezes. After thinking about it you go to research beer and Vodka on the same sites. When you do this, you have enough information to lead you to devise a more refined and specific theoretical question.

Hypothesis

Okay, so you find out that, beer-a simple ale-is "low" alcohol content, and Vodka-a distilled spirit-is "high" alcohol content. The rest is water and "flavoring". So, you could come up with the following question: Does it take a certain amount of alcohol in water to be an effective antifreeze for water?

So, the hypothesis is,

Ethanol can be an effective antifreeze when enough is added to water.

Which leads you to the question, if the hypothesis is true, then how much is enough?

Experimentation

A typical home freezer should be about -15 to -25 C, which is the same as 5 to -13 F. Pure water freezes at 0C or 32F, unless you live at the top of a mountain, in which case it might be a bit lower. You can get ice anytime using ice cube trays, right? Well, these would make the perfect experimentation trays, ahhhh, just like a lab the kitchen can be :) So, you will need either to have access to ultra pure ethanol and use about a 1/4 cup, or you'll go buy the cheapest, really smallest bottle of something no less than 140 "Proof", which would be about 70% Ethanol by volume.

Buy a gallon of distilled water, or use tap water-if you're lazy :).

Get something like an eye dropper, or a baby spoon, or a straw for transfering liquid from one well of the tray to the next. Practice doing this without losing more than a drop or two during the transfering so that you get a very good measurement in the end.

Get your ice tray, and empty it all out. Dry it, and warm it to room temp.

Get a good permanent marker.

Get some food coloring, you will only need a few drops, so if you have two different colors at home already, no need to buy more. But, you can find them at the store (Much cheaper than the alcohol!).

Poor water into the first ice well to within 2-3 millimeters from the top. Draw a line carefully and precisely as possible around the outside of the ice well with the marker to demark where the "full" line is to be ... well, when still wet anyway :) Draw this same line on all wells; be as accurate as possible when copying the line from well to well. (if you have a problem seeing where this line should be drawn, use a highly see through ice tray, and/or do this under a very bright light source)

Fill a well with water to the full-line or if you still have the water in the well, transfer it slowly to either of the empty wells that are next to it. Stop transfering the water when both wells are as equal as possible, this is also very important to be precise! This will be the "half-full" line, and it's higher than one would think it would be if just "eye-balled". Make this same "half-full" line on all wells using your trusty marker.

Exciting, take your pure water, your strong alcohol, your tray, two small cups, and your transfering instrument. Place everything on a nice level wide open space, like a counter top.

Pour some of your pure water into a clean cup, and place it near one end of the ice tray, pour near to the same amount of your strong alcohol into the other small cup, and place it near the other end of your ice tray.

Put both of your larger water and alcohol bottles back into the refridgerator, for later use.

Add 3 drop of one color to your water cup, and mix until streaks are dissolved. Using a different color, do the same to the alcohol cup.

Transfer alcohol from your cup to the first two wells on the end of the ice tray-if the ice tray were standing on its long side, then these two wells would be above and beneath one another. Transfer alcohol to these wells until they reach the full line, and these lines are very important to go by, so be as patient as possible.

Next, dry your transfering instrument, or if you have a second one ever better! Use it to transfer the water to the other end of the tray's first two wells, just as you did for the alcohol end. However, this time, stop when you reach the half-full line.

Take your marker, and draw a line around the tops of these wells. These are what are refered to as "positive" and "negative" controls.

     positive controls in an experiment are used as a guideline for that which a truly positive result should act like, and negative controls are what truly negative results should act like

From the water cup, slowly carefully transfer water to every empty well, to the "half-full" mark.

Take your cups of water and alcohol and set them aside, making sure to either put them back in their jugs in the refridgerator or just making sure you know which is which, you can always smell them at a distance to make sure :)

From the alcohol side, slowly transfer over half from each well to it's closest neighbor going from the alcohol side towards the water side. This transfering should be done in only one direction, from the stronger alcohol to the water well next to it, and stop when the strong alcohol wells are half empty, and the well next to it is at full. This should be true at the same time, and you'll know it's done right.

Using your transfering instrument, stir each of the newly "full" wells about 15-20 times, and besure to not take any significant amount of the liquid from the first well to the second well below it when you go to stir it. You will know when enough stirring is done when the colors are mixed uniformly, no swirling or streaking left.

Next, from these two well stirred wells, transfer over to the next column of half-full water wells, until each of them are full. Then, perform the stirring again, in the same way.

Continue with this traveling transfering step until you come to the pure water full filled wells; do not attempt to transfer any from the second to last column, to the pure water wells. However, do stir the second to last wells once the are filled from the third to last wells.

To finish the experimental tray off, take away exactly half of the second to last well, and throw it into the trash or pool it on the counter top to dry, or put it into a napkin to soak up, basically get rid of half of the second to last column after it's been stirred.

Your experiment tray is ready to be carefully placed into the freezer, and it should look like the following:

-Half and Full lines should be drawn on the outsides of all the of ice wells, there should be marked outlines on the top edges of the wells for the pure water and the pure strong alcohol. Strongly one color at one end, and slowly changing from one color to the other color on the other end of the ice tray.

-All wells should be half full, at this point.

-You have just performed what is called a Serial Dilution. Slowly, diluting a solution from one container to a series of several others, each times cutting the solution by a set percentage. In this case, we've done a 50:50, which is the same quality as a 1:1, Serial Dilution. In other words, we added as much from one well of the previous solution to the next one, and so on and so forth. Very classic science, here.

-You are ready to go into the freezer for an hour.

Record the state of all of the wells of your experiment after they have been allowed to move to freezing temperature for pure water.

Analyse the data.

Conclusion

Well, you tell me, what were you able to determine? I would like to know, too, please let me know if you do try this out! :)

Confirmation: You repeat the experiment, and make sure you can still come to the same conclusion.

2. Asking questions is a central feature in any scientific inquiry.

2A. After all of that which I just explain, I think you can see that this is very true. Also, the word inquiry means to go into an investigative question. So, it's kind of a silly question.

2P. If you do not have a question, there is no need for a method to approach it, or Science to be used.

3. and 5. Doing Science follows a step-by-step execution of The Scientific Method. The Scientific Method is done by following its steps in sequence. These two statements are highly related. There is only a slight difference between the two.

Answers to 3 and 5. The Scientific Method as I said, does follow a path from Question to Conclusion and Confirmation-which is just making sure the Experiments are done correctly and give a certain reproducible Conclusion.

However, while The Scientific Method must complete all of its steps, and they just logically follow one another, one might find that when they reach their hypothesis, it might beg another qu