5th Grade Amazing Earth March Scientific Method The presentation is short allowing ample time for the activities.    Ask helpers to: familiarize themselves with the activity and its goal set up during the presentation   Thank you for making Amazing Earth possible! 5th Grade Amazing Earth March

What is the scientific method? The way scientists study and learn about things. Using the scientific method allows scientists to identify their question, come up with ideas, test it out, and draw conclusions. ASK several questions to prompt student thinking before revealing bullet points. What is the scientific method? Why do we want to use a method instead of just trying out different things? The scientific method allows us to identify the question we are trying to answer and approach the question in a stepwise fashion.

Steps to the scientific method Walk the students through each step of the scientific method and ask them why each step is important. It’s important to remember we can’t move onto the next step without completing the one before it. We need to know what question we’re trying to answer. If we don’t know, we can’t move onto the next steps. Research allows us to gain knowledge about our question before we even start. This is important in giving us background information needed to come up our hypothesis (educated guess) and design our experiment. Our hypothesis gives us something to test. Using the knowledge from our research, we can predict what we think will happen and design our experiment to test this. Design the experiment to test your hypothesis. We know what question we’re trying to answer. We have all the background knowledge from our research. We came up with our hypothesis. Now we’re ready to test it out. Collect data, make observations. Using the data and observations we have, draw conclusions. The part that isn’t on here … TRY AGAIN. Experiments don’t often work the first time. But using the scientific method will generate data we can use to revise our plan and try again.

Today’s activities Today we will use the scientific method to perform two different experiments. We will work individually to perform each experiment.

Experiment 1 Question: Will more drops of water or dish soap fit on a penny? Background research: What do we need to know? Hypothesis: Write down what you think will happen. Ask the students what type of information they need to find out during their background research. The important thing to know here is that water molecules stick together more than dish soap molecules do (water has a higher surface tension). Based on this information, ask the students to formulate a hypothesis about what they think will happen. Experiment: How will they do their experiment? They each receive a transfer pipet, a penny, a cup of water, and a cup of dish soap. What steps should we do? Data / observations: What data will we collect? Students should count the number of drops of each that can be placed onto the penny before it runs over. Note that they will need to carefully add each drop the same way each time. What observations will we make? What does the liquid looks like on the penny. Which one appears to sit higher on the penny? Conclusions: What conclusions can you draw? Was your hypothesis correct? What would you do differently (if anything) next time?

How will you design your experiment? Place a clean penny heads up onto a piece of paper. Using a pipet add one drop of water at a time onto the surface of the penny. Count the number of drops of water that fit onto the penny before it spills off onto the paper. Wipe the penny clean and repeat using dish soap. How will you design your experiment? This slide is animated. Ask the students to come up with how they will design their experiment. Once you’ve had a bit of discussion, you can show the steps on the right. Do not start the experiment until you go through the next slide to discuss what data they will collect.

What data will you collect? Experiment 1 What data will you collect? Liquid Number of drops Water Dish Soap Ask the students what kind of data they would want to collect. The slide is animated so once they discuss this, you can show the table. Suggest to them to draw a table in their notebook they can fill in as they run their experiment and collect their data.

Experiment 1 What conclusions did you draw? Was your hypothesis correct?

Experiment 2 Question: Is this liquid an acid or base? Background research: What do we need to know? Hypothesis: For each liquid, write down if you think it’s an acid or a base. Experiment: How will you design your experiment? Data collection: What data will you collect? What observations will you make? Conclusions: What conclusions did you draw? Was your hypothesis correct? Ask the students what type of information they need to find out during their background research. Acids and bases are two special kinds of chemicals. If a chemical has a lot of hydrogen ions in it, it will be acidic. If it has a lot of hydroxide (OH – oxygen and hydrogen together), it will be basic. Scientists measure how acidic or basic something is using the pH scale. We will use pH paper for our experiment. When you put a drop of the liquid onto the paper, it will change color. You can compare it to the scale to determine the pH of the liquid. Acids have a pH <7. Bases have a pH >7. Something with a pH = 7 is neutral. Fresh water is neutral with a pH of 7. Experiment: How will they do their experiment? They each receive a transfer pipet and various liquids. What steps should we do? IMPORTANT TO USE ONLY ONE DROP PER LIQUID Data / observations: What data will we collect? They should have a place to record the result for each liquid. They can make a table in their science notebook. Conclusions: What conclusions can you draw? Was your hypothesis correct? What would you do differently (if anything) next time? Updated 2/28