You sit down next to your friend in the cafeteria to have yourself a sophisticated meal consisting of an apple, a slice of cheese, and a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Upon taking your sandwich out of its bag, you observe that once again it is soggy. This is the third day in a row you have opened your bag to find a sad and soggy sandwich.
The other days with no more than a little sigh you resigned yourself to your fate and ate your sandwich. Today however you have had enough of soggy sandwiches. You are determined to get to the bottom of this problem. Welcome to MooMooMath and Science.
Today we will be talking about the scientific method. We will cover the definition, the steps, and a real-life example of this helpful process. The scientific method is a process of experimentation that is used to explore observations and answer questions.
It is a very helpful process that can help us find practical solutions to everyday problems. or help scientists ensure that the conclusions they draw are accurate and not based on false assumptions. The steps of the scientific method are as follows.
Make an observation and ask a question. Conduct research. Form a hypothesis.
Test the hypothesis with an experiment. Analyze your data and draw a conclusion. Communicate your results.
Returning to the case of the soggy sandwich, you have completed the first two steps of the scientific method. You made an observation that your sandwich was soggy and specifically that the sandwich was only soggy on the jelly side. You also asked a question, why is my sandwich soggy? You then decide to conduct research.
Research can take many forms, such as trusted scientific journals, online resources, conversations with friends, books, and articles. You start by asking your friends who also eat peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and also go online and discover that most people prefer their PB&J in a solid container. You form a hypothesis, which is a proposed explanation that serves as a starting point for further investigation. You hypothesize that bread gets soggy in bags, but would not in a container.
You make a hypothesis. If I pack my sandwich in a container, then it will not get soggy. So the next morning, you test your hypothesis. You make your sandwich the same way you always do, but you pack your sandwich in a container instead of a bag, hoping this will serve as a soggy sandwich problem. When you take your sandwich out at lunch, you are dismayed to find that your sandwich is still wet.
You think for a while and conclude that the way your sandwich was packed was not the problem. After additional research, you propose a new hypothesis. If I put peanut butter on both sides of the bread, with jelly in the middle, then my sandwich will not get soggy.
At lunchtime, you open your sandwich and discover that your hypothesis held true. The peanut butter acted as a barrier between the jelly and the bread, which caused the sandwich to not become soggy. Let's review the steps of the scientific method as it relates to our example. Observation. You made the observation that your sandwich was wet on the jelly side, and you asked the question.
Why is my sandwich soggy? Research. You asked friends about their sandwiches and conducted read articles online. You formed a hypothesis.
In fact, you made two hypotheses. The first was that the bag made your sandwich soggy while a container would not. This hypothesis was not supported by the result of the experiment. So you made a second hypothesis that the sandwich The making method determines whether the bread gets wet or stays dry and that jelly soaks the bread. You tested the hypothesis.
You conducted experiments to test your predictions. In a true scientific experiment, you would repeat the experiment many times to make sure that your results are accurate. You formed a conclusion. You concluded from running the experiment and observations that peanut butter acts as a barrier and prevents the jelly from making the sandwich soggy. If it was not supported, you would need to repeat the process by forming a new hypothesis and running new experiments.
And finally, you can communicate your results to others. Thanks for watching and remember kindness multiplies kindness.