Scientific Experiment

Scientific Method

• General way of organizing an investigation
• Repeatable experimentation 
• Trying to observe and understand the natural laws in our universe
• Hypothesis: your educated guess of what it is you’re observing -> the more knowledge you have of a particular phenomenon the better your hypothesis
• Hypothesis must be testable
• The better you setup your experiment, the better the results/final conclusion
• The conclusion only has one statement: either support or reject your hypothesis
• Framework to consider ideas and evidence in a repeatable way

Science and Society

• The application of science for practical purposes is called technology
• Science is impartial and does not make ethical or moral judgements
• The role of society is to use scientific info to make informed decisions about the use of technology

Progression of the Scientific Method

• Hypothesis: a proposed explanation for a scientific phenomenon
• Theory: a more thoroughly tested and accepted hypothesis-> best explanation we have out of all other explanations
• Principle: more concrete concepts, but they don’t explain the broad subject (more specific than theories)
• Law: description of a phenomenon
• The more we understand a concept the more we can predict the outcome
• Want to know how everything absolutely works

Experimental Design

• Variables: changeable element of an experiment
  • Independent variable: manipulated variable
  • Dependent variable: shows response
  • Standardized variables: held constant for all subjects
• Important to have a diverse sample size because it will give you better results; conclusion applies to more people
• Placebo effect: when you truly believe you’ll get better/cured, you do
• All other factors must be held constant so only the IV and DV are correlated
• Controls: provides a basis for comparison to the experimental group
• Placebo: inert substance resembling treatment given to the experimental group
• Double blind design: neither researchers nor participants know who received the substance being evaluated until after the data is tabulated