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Information on Science Projects

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INITIAL OBSERVATION You notice something, and wonder why it happens. INFORMATION GATHERING Find out about what you want to investigate. TITLE THE PROJECT Choose a title that describes the effect or thing you are investigating. STATE THE PURPOSE OF THE PROJECT What do you want to find out? MAKE HYPOTHESIS Make a list of answers to the questions you have. DESIGN AN EXPERIMENTAL PROCEDURE TO TEST YOUR HYPOTHESIS Design an experiment to test each hypothesis. Make a step-by-step list of what you will do to answer your questions. This list is called an experimental procedure. Guidelines for Experimental Procedures Select only one thing to change in each experiment. Things that can be changed are called variables. Change something that will help you test your hypothesis. The procedure must tell how you will change this one thing. The procedure must explain how you will measure the amount of change. Each type of experiment needs a "control" for comparison so that you can see what the change actually did. OBTAIN MATERIALS AND EQUIPMENT Make a list of the things you need to do the experiments, and prepare them. If you need special equipment, a local college or business may be able to loan it to you. Another source of science materials are mail order supply houses such as Edmund Scientific in Barrington, New Jersey (phone 1-609-457-8880 for a catalog). Professional science supply houses are located in larger cities. They will have just about anything you will need. DO THE EXPERIMENT AND RECORD DATA Do the experiment and record all numerical measurements made. Data can be amounts of chemicals used, how long something is, the time something took, etc. If you are not making any measurements, you probably are not doing an experimental science project. RECORD YOUR OBSERVATIONS Observations can be written descriptions of what you noticed during an experiment, or problems encountered. Keep careful notes of everything you do, and everything that happens. Observations are valuable when drawing conclusions, and useful for locating experimental errors . CALCULATIONS Perform any math needed to turn raw data recorded during experiments into numbers you will need to make tables, graphs or draw conclusions. SUMMARIZE RESULTS Summarize what happened. This could be in the form of a table of numerical data or graphs. It could also be a written statement of what occurred during the experiments. DRAW CONCLUSIONS Using the trends in your experimental data and your experimental observations, try to answer your original questions. Is your hypothesis correct? Now is the time to pull together what happened, and assess the experiments you did. Other Things You Can Mention in the Conclusion If your hypothesis is not correct, what could be the answer to your question? Summarize any difficulties or problems you had doing the experiment. Do you need to change the procedure and repeat your experiment? What would you do different next time? List other things you learned. TRY TO ANSWER RELATED QUESTIONS What you have learned may allow you to answer other questions. Many questions are related. WHAT IF MY SCIENCE PROJECT DOESN'T WORK? No matter what happens, you will learn something. .
LINKS:
New Science Source
Official Education Guide
Higher Education FinderGuide
More Science Information>
There Are Different Forms of the Scientific Method A confusing aspect of science is that not all fields of science arrive at conclusions in the same way. The physical sciences, like physics and chemistry, use experimental forms of the "scientific method." The physical sciences do experiments to gather numerical data from which relationships are derived, and conclusions are made. The more descriptive sciences, like zoology and anthropology, may use a form of the method that involves gathering of information by visual observation or interviewing. What is common among all sciences, however, is the making of hypothesis to explain observations, the gathering of data, and based on this data, the drawing of conclusions that confirm or deny the original hypothesis. The difference is in what is considered data, and how data is gathered and processed. Data for a physical scientist is numbers. The numbers are often plotted on graphs. Graphs can be used to derive equations that can be used for making predictions. Data, for an anthropologist, could be a recorded interview. Interviews can be compared to other related information. Hence the distinction between the exact sciences (physical sciences that use numbers to measure and calculate results), and other sciences that use descriptions and inferences to arrive at results. If you are not aware of this difference, you could produce a written report for your science project. Your project will then only show what you know about something instead of experimentally answering questions you have about observations you have made. The information given below assumes you are doing an experimental science project that uses the experimental method to gather data and test hypothesis.
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