hello class this is dr. Irby ghosh this lesson is about your first lab a scientific method it's a background to explain what the concepts are that you will be learning about in this particular online lab so the scientific method involves a set of processes that test a question now the question appear is of course developed from an observation and after you ask that question the researcher may go on to do some more background research through books or online searches or looking at what other scientific scientists have researched in the past and then construct a hypothesis about that particular observation after they construct that hypothesis then they test it with some experiments and during the experiment they figure out if the procedure is working or not if it's not then they troubleshoot the procedure and they check all the steps and the setup and things like if the word procedure is working they analyze the data and draw conclusions you can either have results that make sense with the hypothesis or results that are partially making sense with the hypothesis or not making sense with the hypothesis at all so at any weight scientists generally communicate their results through terms of a publication or talking to other people in the field if the results only partially or don't see what you what you want out of the hypothesis then you look at the experimental data again and you just a more background research on a new or future project and you will ask questions to the forum the hypothesis so in this lab we're going to be asking scientific questions with a bunch of scenarios that you're given so generally scientists on a day to day level are investigating and understanding and explaining how things work they're very curious they have recipes and formulas for attaining and doing something they try to build their investigation from the scientific questions that they have and how do they come up with a scientific in order to figure out how they come up with a scientific question we must first understand the common elements that define what science is so what is science the ultimate goal of science explain the natural world scientists are naturally curious and they want to answer questions and explain things so science is defined as experimental hypothesis driven investigation of a phenomenon in order to figure out elucidate means to figure out patterns of nature and the process of governing formation maintenance and changing of those patterns so scientists are looking why behind certain patterns and the different processes that are governing this particular phenomenon from occurring in the natural world so what does cause an effect to fit into all this well answering questions about cause and effect has led to some of the most powerful insights offered in science and explaining the natural world means using cause and effect cause and effect are such important ingredients that we have to come up with different names in them in different fields of study but they're all synonyms that means the same cause and effect so let's demystify some of this scientific jargon and we can do this by a synonym game so you can reduce the intimidation and let your brain start to be creative so for example what is a synonym for independent variable and what is the synonym of a dependent variable an X and a y a driver and a responding variable etc remember English grammar and what kind of words are caused by if cause and effect usually a subject and an object so what are the words that connects subject and objects in a sentence usually a verb so let's think of some verbs that you can link the synonym of a cause-and-effect this is the third ingredient in your question cause effect and a verb so let's look at it an independent variable drives a dependent variable and X phenomenon generates a Y phenomenon a driver causes a responding variable a generator regulates a function a process controls a pattern and agent increases or force decreases something a factor suppresses fill you get the idea so coming up with your own recipe it's not so hard formulating a question that supports a recipe for your investigating relationship between cause and effect also enables good communication so let's identify a cause and effect so let's look at an example so here you have a title from a recent journal article and you can identify the type of research described in that title by establishing the cause-and-effect relationship so you can highlight the potential cause in yellow by underlining just once and then green by underlining it twice so just pick any scientific article that you find and say obscure by this out now the scientific method there's basically seven steps a scientist makes an observation ask us a question forms a hypothesis which is an educated guess it's basically a guess but an educated one from in order to answer these questions they make a prediction from the hypothesis what a bunch of experiments analyze the result and see hey choose my results support what I guessed was the right answer is it supported is it not supported and should we try again if it's not supported so how do we use a scientific method let's look at in a very everyday common example of using the scientific method for example my toaster doesn't toast my bread in the morning there's something wrong with the electrical outlet that's what I'm guessing is what's happening say there's a fray in this if we observe that my toaster doesn't toast my bread there's something wrong with the electrical outlet right so the question is why doesn't my toaster work the hypothesis would be something is wrong with the electrical outlet up diction would be if something is wrong with the electric outlet my coffeemaker also won't work when plugged into it I plugged my coffeemaker into the outlet would be the experiment and the result hopefully is my coffeemaker works now that is a vivid in a very simple term let's look at it in terms of your lab as it applies to your first case the first case in your lab is the case of beriberi in 1887 a strange nerve disease attack the people in the Dutch East Indies the disease was very berry and the symptoms of the disease included weakness a loss of appetite and victims often died of heart failure scientists thought that this disease might be caused by bacteria so they injected chickens with bacteria from the blood of patients with beriberi the injected chickens became sick however so did the group of the chickens that were not injected back in the bacteria so what scientists thought that there was some unknowns water soluble factor in these patients and in the chickens that cost beriberi notice something before the experiment he did with chickens he took a bunch of chickens any and he had made them put on a diet of whole grain rice and then during the experiment he fed them polished rice dr. Beckmann researched this interesting case and found that polished rice lacked the thymine and which is a vitamin necessary for good health so let's look at his research so in his experiment to see whether if the bacteria caused beriberi or not the hypothesis was to look at a control versus inject group to see if it was the bacteria that was doing this so he took a bunch of chickens and he one group did not have any injections and the other group had the injections from the blood of the people who had beriberi both of them were healthy chickens and what he found was that both chickens that were injected as well as those were that were not injected became sick so he had to rethink his apophysis because he would normally have thought the injected chicken's would be the ones that are the only ones to get sick and the ones that didn't get injected wouldn't get sick but he found both of the chickens got sick so he scratched his head and he thought well maybe it's not about bacteria that's in the blood from these patients he rejected the hypothesis that it was bacterial so then he took another control group of chickens and which did not get the injection and were not infected and also the injected group and he put them on a different diet so beriberi must be caused by something besides the bacteria he thought and so dr. eggman observed that it might be due to a nutrient deficiency found in the food takes of chicken so what he did was instead of putting of the chickens on the polished rice diet he took them off and put them both on the whole grain rice diet one group was on the whole grain diet one was in the polish now the Polish grain did not have any thiamine whereas the whole grain did so what he found was is the ones that were in the whole grain diet that had the thymine and weren't deficient did okay they didn't get berry berry but the ones in the polished rice group that ate the rice they got berry berry so it must be because of this thiamine deficiency he then went and backtracked and figured out what's the difference in ingredients between Polish rice and whole grain rice had to be the thiamine deficiency so what have you learned today you learned about the scientific method how hypotheses are made investigated and the effects of cause-effect to enter a verb takes a lot of creativity to do all this alright