The Scientific Method

The scientific method , is a body of techniques for investigating phenomena, acquiring new knowledge. It was developed over many years, and is still being used today. The method also has many steps;

Steps:

1.Ask a Question- Before you start anything, you must figure out exactly what you are trying to discover or answer; i.e How are we able to stand on the Earth, if it is round?

2.Do Background Research- Find out everything there is to know about the topic that you are questioning. This will help you create your hypothesis, determine your variables, and set-up a procedure.

3.Construct Hypothesis- Once you have all the knowledge, you can now give you best guess on what the answer to your initial question will be, supported by facts from your research.

4.Test with an Experiment- When you have written your educated guess, or hypothesis, you can now create an experiment that will answer, and hopefully prove your guess valid.

5. Analyze Results, Draw Conclusion- Once all of your data is recovered, you must analyze it, and decide weather or not your hypothesis was correct.

6a.Hypothesis is True- If your hypothesis is true, you can move onto the next step in the process.

6b.Hypothesis is False, or Partially Correct- If your data is questionable, then you must go back to step 3, (Construct Hypothesis) and do the test over and over, until your data suggests that your hypothesis is correct.

7.Report Results- Once your data, and analysis are satisfactory, you may present them to the public. If others are able to reconstruct your experiment and come up with the same results, your hypothesis eventually becomes a theory. Again, if your theory proves to be consistent, then it is possible that the theory becomes a law, like Newton's Laws of Motion.

This method was created in the late 1600s, an is still used by all scientists today, why? Til this day, no one is able to detect a flaw in the method, that could make all of the data questionable, because it demands that the experiment is done over and over by various people before it can become a theory, then no one can pass fake data, since no one would be able to replicate the results. Also, not only are there no flaws, none of the laws determined by the method, where proven wrong, proving, that it is a reliable method indeed.