What is the scientific method?

Answer 1

You could devise the experiment to test your hypothesis.A theory consists of set of basic principles from which many predications can be deduced.

Answer 2

The scientific method is a process of coming up with ideas and testing them. The process has several steps. First, you observe something. For instance, Newton observed that planets orbited the Sun, and that stuff fell towards the Earth.

Next, you hypothesize. That means you try to come up with an explanation for why what you observed happened. The explanation should make predictions about what you will observe in the future, so you can test it. Sticking with the example of gravity, Newton hypothesized that all objects with mass attracted each other, and that we didn't notice this attraction to anything other than the Earth because there was nothing else around big enough to have a significant gravitational force on us.

Third, you predict. What does your hypothesis suggest you should observe under different circumstances? Newton used his hypothesis of gravity to develop mathematical descriptions of the orbits of the then-know planets.

Fourth, you test your hypothesis. Sometimes, as with Newton's prediction of planetary motion, all you can do is wait and see if you were right. More often, you have to do an experiment.

Fifth, you refine your hypothesis. Maybe your experiment went exactly as you expected, and it becomes a point in favor of your hypothesis. Or maybe you have to change the hypothesis a little to account for some small differences. Or maybe the whole thing went terribly, horribly wrong and you have to start all over with a new hypothesis.

After many experiments have backed it up, and if no reproducible experiments contradict it, a hypothesis becomes a theory. There are people out there who believe that a theory is an idea with no evidence, but scientifically speaking, they are wrong. A theory is an idea with a good deal of evidence backing it up.

VERY occasionally, a theory may be so strongly supported by the evidence as to become a law. To give you an idea of how difficult this process is: Gravity is still referred to by some people as a theory, although others do call it a law.

All of that--from the first observations, up until the acceptance of an idea first as a theory, then as a law--is the scientific method.

Answer 3

Angie gave a good sketch of the typical pattern of the scientific method.

Just two comments to add:

a) The important detail is the concept of "repeatable experiment": you have to be able to reproduce the same results again and again. No use studying a "one off" phenomenon. That would not be science. (But that's not to say such a phenomenon wouldn't be real.)

b) When science is being done in practise on a day to day basis, seldom does it fit the beautiful pattern of the (abstract) scientific method. Look at all the great scientific theories: none of them were discovered "by the book", except maybe the 19th-century theory of electromagnetism. But that doesn't matter, so long as, after the fact, we can revise all the experiments and re-read the history of what happened according to the scientific method pattern.

Answer 4

The scientific method will vary depending upon the person you talk to. In general the scientific method (process) goes something like this:

Observe phenomena about which you have no explanation.

Form a hypothesis, or "educated guess" which describes your observations.

Conduct experiments will which will verify or conflict with your hypothesis.

Based upon your experimental results, determine whether or not your hypothesis was correct. If you were not correct, form another hypothesis and continue experimenting.

Answer 5

"1. Observation and description of a phenomenon or group of phenomena.

2. Formulation of an hypothesis to explain the phenomena. In physics, the hypothesis often takes the form of a causal mechanism or a mathematical relation.

3. Use of the hypothesis to predict the existence of other phenomena, or to predict quantitatively the results of new observations.

4. Performance of experimental tests of the predictions by several independent experimenters and properly performed experiments."

Answer 6

hard to explain

Answer 7

of what