Course Outline 

Scientific Method  

One thing common to most scientists is an innate sense of curiosity. Scientists are always asking why things happen. They also notice little discrepancies in the world that make them wonder.

In this assignment, you will practice your skills at asking questions. You are probably good at asking why you can't go out or why you have to help at home. The types of questions that scientists ask are more about the physical and biological world. They can go back to questions that you may have had as a small child e.g. 'why is the sky blue?' 'why do we have hair on our heads?' etc.

Working at your questioning skills will help you to design an experiment later on in this course. Most science classes give you a question and then let you design a hypothesis and an experiment to answer that question. In your Inquiry project, later in this course, you will find a question of your own to answer.

A good science question is one that is designed to help you understand something better. You have probably asked a parent or a teacher a question like 'how big is an elephant.' This isn't a particularly interesting question because it can simply be looked up in a book. However, 'why is an elephant so big' is much more interesting. It allows for a variety of hypotheses to be proposed. Why do you think an elephant is so big? Another type of good science question might be along the lines of 'Can I run faster if I eat a lot of carbohydrates?' Again, this is an open-ended question that immediately brings to mind some experiment ideas.

For a little more information on the importance of questions in science take a look at the following web site:

Biology 4 Kids

Assignment: Writing Good Questions
Go outside or look outside. Notice things around you. Think about them and wonder why they are. Generate some questions. Look them over. Are they questions that can be simply answered, or do they require some experimentation to answer? Edit your question list until you have five questions (related or unrelated) that look like good science questions to you.

When you are happy with your list, submit them to the discussion group.

Go to the Scientific Questions Discussion Group

Next: Classifying questions

Look over the list submitted by the person before you. Think about these questions. In particular, try to determine whether they are:

L: "Look it up in a book" - type questions. Are these questions the type that it will be easy to look up in a book or on the internet to find teh answer? "Where do lodgepole pines grow?" would be this kind of a question.

V: Some kinds of questions are more value judgements than scientific. For instance "Which type of rock is most beautiful?" isn't really a testable question. If you are interested in testing people's perceptions, you might ask "Which type of rock do people find more beautiful?", but keep in mind that you are testing the people, not the rock.

EV: Questions that can't easily be answered by looking them up in a book, but can be experimented on, however are rather vague. "Why do certain trees grow in certain areas?" might be included in this category.

ES: Questions that are good for experimenting on because they are specific. "How do the trees that grow in the creek to the west of my house compare to those on the south slope of the butte to the north?" is a good, testable, scientific question.

Create a reply to the message submitted by the person above you. Put each of their messages into one of these categories, by putting the letter code (L, V, EV, or ES) next to it.. Then choose one of these questions and rewrite it to make it more specific and better for experimenting.

Go to Lesson 2: Hypothesizing >>