1. The Scientific Method and Experimental Design

2. Focus Questions What is science?
Why is it important to repeat an experiment?
Why is it important to have a control in your experiment?
Identify the control setup, experimental setup, and dependent and independent variables in a given experiment

3. What is Science?
Science is a process that helps us to understand the world around us. It is a way of knowing things.

4. What do we call that process?
The Scientific Method
Make observations
Ask a question
Create a hypothesis that answers that question
Experiment and collect data
Analyze data
Form a conclusion
Repeat the experiment

5. Vocabulary that you need to know
Observation – something you can actually see
Quantitative Observation – amounts; numerical
Qualitative Observation – descriptive; non-numerical
Inference – something that we assume to be true based on what we already know.
Science is based on both of these things!

6. Experimental Design – how we set up experiments
Control setup – the portion of the experiment that we keep under “normal” conditions
Experimental setup – the portion of the experiment that we are changing in order to get a specified result

7. The variables in any experiment
Independent variable – the part of the experiment that YOU change
Dependent variable – the thing in the experiment that is affected by what you change
When graphing, the independent variable ALWAYS goes on the x- axis, while the dependent variable goes on the y-axis