What is Science?

The Goal of Science

• to investigate and understand the natural world

• To explain events in the natural world

• To use those explanations to make useful predictions

What is science

• An organized way of using evidence to learn about the natural world.

Thinking like a scientist

• If the car wont start, what steps would people take to figure out why?

• 1) observations = gathering information about events or processes in a careful orderly way– Usually involves using your senses

• 2) data = the information gathered from your observations

• 3) inference = a logical interpretation based on prior knowledge or experience

Explaining and Interpreting Evidence

• Scientists explain events in nature by interpreting evidence

• Hypothesis = a proposed scientific explanation for a set of observations

• A hypothesis must in a form that can be tested!

Science as a way of knowing

• Science discusses many facts, however don’t think biology is a set of truths that never change.

• Science is a way of knowing!• Rather than unchanging knowledge, science is

an ongoing process that involves asking questions, observing, making inferences, and testing hypothesis.

How Science Works

Designing an experiment

• 1) Asking a Question– Identify a problem to be solved

• 2) Forming a Hypothesis– Using prior knowledge or experience to answer

the question

Designing an experiment

• 3) Setting up a controlled experiment

• Test your hypothesis with an experiment that only tests one variable at a time. All other variables must be kept the same

Variables

• Manipulated/Independent Variable = The variable that is purposely changed

• Responding/Dependent Variable = The variable that is observed– What you are testing for or looking to see happen

How a Theory Develops

• When many experiments/investigations build up evidence, a hypothesis can become so well supported that we call it a theory.

• Theory = a well tested explanation that unifies a broad range of observations.