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

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