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scientific method

Steps to experiments with the scientific method

The Scientific Method is an organized way of figuring something out. There are usually six parts to it.

1. Purpose- What do you want to learn? An example would be, "Do plants grow faster under different colored lights?" or "Do girls have faster reflexes than boys?"
   
   
2. Research- Find out as much as you can. Look for information in books, on the internet, and by talking with teachers to get the most information you can before you start experimenting.
   
   
3. Hypothesis- After doing your research, try to predict the answer to the problem. Another term for hypothesis is 'educated guess'. This is usually stated like " If I...(do something) then...(this will occur)"

   An example would be, "If I grow plants under green light bulbs, then they will grow faster than plants growing under red light bulbs"
   

4. Experiment- The fun part! Design a test or procedure to confirm or disprove your hypothesis. In our example, you would set up a plant under a green light bulb and a plant under a red light and observe each for a couple of weeks. You would also set up a plant under regular white light so that you can compare it with the others. If you are doing this for a science fair, you will probably have to write down exactly what you did for your experiment step by step.
   
   
5. Analysis- Record what happened during the experiment. Also known as 'data'.
   
   
6. Conclusion- Review the data and check to see if your hypothesis was correct. If the plant under the green light bulb grew faster, then you proved your hypothesis, if not, your hypothesis was wrong. It is not "bad" if your hypothesis was wrong, because you still learned something!

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