Scientific Method

2. The Scientific
Method
♫A Way to Solve a
Problem♫

3. WHAT IS THE SCIENTIFIC
METHOD?
•It is the steps someone takes to identify a
question, develop a hypothesis, design and
carry out steps or procedures to test the
hypothesis, and document observations
and findings to share with someone else.
•In simple words, it’s a way to solve a
problem.

5. The Scientific
Method involves a
series of steps that
are used to
investigate a natural
occurrence.

6. The scientific method consists of five steps:
Observation
Hypothesis
Experiment
Theory or law
Prediction

7. The first process in the scientific method
involves the observation of a phenomenon,
event, or “problem.”
The discovery of such a phenomenon may
occur due to an interest on the observer’s
part, a suggestion or assignment, or it may be
an unknown that one wishes to resolve.
The observer has to collect data about the
problem. The data may be drawn from a
simple observation.

8. Observation leads to a question that
needs to be answered to satisfy human
curiosity about the observation, such as
why or how this event happened or what
it is like.
Scientific questions need to be
answerable and lead to the formation of a
hypothesis about the problem.

9. To answer a question, a hypothesis will be
formed.
This is an educated guess to answer the
question regarding the problem. A scientific
hypothesis has to be testable.
In other words, there must be a way to try
to make the hypothesis fail. If this hypothesis
is correct, we should be able to confirm it by
testing. This testing of the hypothesis is called
the experiment.

10. An experiment is a controlled procedure
carried out to discover, test, or demonstrate
something.
An experiment is performed to confirm
that the hypothesis is valid. If the results of the
experiment do not support the hypothesis, the
experimental technique must be checked to
make sure that the experiment was really
measuring that aspect of nature that it was
supposed to measure.

11. If nothing wrong is found with the
experimental technique, and the results still
contradict the hypothesis, then the original
hypothesis must be modified.
Another experiment is then made to test
the modified hypothesis. The hypothesis can be
modified and experiments redesigned as often
as necessary until the hypothesis is validated.

12. Finally, success: the experimental results
confirm that the hypothesis is correct. The
hypothesis now becomes a new theory about
some specific aspect of nature, a scientifically
acceptable general principle based on observed
facts. After a careful analysis of the new
theory, a prediction about some presently
unknown aspect of nature can be made.

13. Is the prediction correct? To answer that
question, the prediction must be tested by
performing a new experiment. If the new
experiment does not agree with the prediction,
then the theory is not as general as originally
thought.
Perhaps it is only a special case of some
other more general model of nature. The
theory must now be modified to conform to
the negative results of the experiment.

14. The modified theory is then analyzed to obtain
a new prediction, which is then tested by a new
experiment. If the new experiment confirms the
prediction, then there is reasonable confidence
that this theory of nature is correct. This
process of prediction and experiment continues
many times. As more and more predictions are
confirmed by experiment, indicates that a good
model of the way nature works has been
developed. At this point, the theory can be
called a law of physics.

15. This method of scientific reasoning
demonstrates that the establishment of any
theory is based on experiment. In fact, the
success of physics lies in this agreement
between theoretical models of the natural
world and their experimental confirmation in
the laboratory. A particular model of nature
may be a great intellectual achievement but, if
it does not agree with physical reality, then,
from the point of view of physics, that
hypothesis is useless. Only hypotheses that
can be tested by experiment are relevant in the
study of physics.

16. Observation of the Nature
Hypothesis
Experiment
Prediction
Theory
Lack of agreement
Positive Result
Test Prediction by Experiment
Negative Result
Modify the Theory