When we observe the world around us we come up with questions. To better understand, we investigate on our own until satisfied with a reasonable explanation. Similarly, a science fair project aims to find answers to the questions we have.
This scientific method is used for doing school science fairs in general. Sometimes, the school’s science fair requires you to elaborate on concepts coming from the scientific method. It’s the process which gets you from the problem to the solution and includes everything else you need to do to get there. Since there isn’t an exact process for finding a solution, there are many ways to approach the scientific method. The most common and basic form of this method is explained to help you do your very own science fair.
Asking A Question
The first step to the scientific method is to firstly ask a question.
This is just you curious about an aspect of science and then coming up with an interesting question.
Make sure that when doing a science fair project, the topic you’re going for fascinates you. It’ll be easier to get creative with a topic you are enthusiastic about, compared to a topic that you won’t enjoy learning much from. Also, it will make you more engaged in the process of solving your question.
For example, you’re sitting on your back porch next to your Mandeville flowers and notice that one is erect and healthy and the other is drooping and dying. The first question that comes to your mind is, “Why is this flower dying while the other one is doing fine?” This act of asking a question starts off the scientific method.
Researching that Question
The second step is to gather as much information about your question.
This is the step where we break up our question into relevant concepts we could dig deeper on.
Find reliable sources to get some background information from. Sources like textbooks, magazines, encyclopedias, databases, or the internet could be useful for obtaining information. The idea is to know everything you can to clarify the topic of your science fair.
Like in our flower example, we could research how plants like Mandeville scientifically work. We could look up on the internet for factors that helps plants grow and possible reasons for why they die. Research needs to be done before experimenting and testing things on the plants, we don’t want to construct a misleading experiment based off untrue knowledge. A lot could be learned from an experiment that someone else did as well. We could ask a kind neighbor about their Mandeville from over the years to see how they worked out for them.
Prior research of the topic is useful before finding answers on your own. Research lets us understand what we’re dealing with beforehand and sheds some light on the issue we need to solve.
The Hypothesis
The third step is to form a hypothesis. Using what you observed and learned through research, you come up with a logical explanation that proposes a solution for the problem.
Let’s take the example of our flowers, after enough observation and research it finally hit you that the healthy Mandeville is always receiving sunlight while the droopy-headed flowerheads’ one is in the shade. Before you right away rush into the experiment, you still need to write out this idea in hypothesis form. To formulate a perfect hypothesis, you need to know that it needs to be a testable prediction statement that can be proven right or wrong (eventually from experimenting). We need to firstly make this situation measurable, which is done by identifying the independent and dependent variables. So, in this example, we are assuming that sunlight affects the health of the flower plant. Since the health of the plant depends on sunlight, the plant is the dependent variable. The plants health will change as the amount of sunlight will change. The sunlight is the independent variable, it’s amount isn’t dependent on anything under this experiment. As we conduct the experiment, we’ll be changing the amount of sunlight to see how it will affect the dependent variable.
Also, try to write your hypothesis with “If…then…because..”. The hypothesis for the flowers could be, “If two Mandeville flowers receive different amounts of sunlight, then the Mandeville in the sunlight will be healthier because the plant is using the energy to make its own food.”
Experimentation
Creating a testable hypothesis is necessary, we can’t just assume the solution without testing our hypothesis. We still need to back up our reasoning and prove the results correct by conducting an experiment that will test the predictions of the hypothesis. For the Mandeville example, we need to conduct an experiment that will prove whether or not the amount of sunlight affects the plant’s health. This would be tested by placing the flowers in both sunlight and shade. Also, it’s important for all other factors besides sunlight to remain constant. This means that we must equally water the plants and etc. This ensures the accuracy of our experiment and lessens bias. Other ways to reduce bias is to repeat the experiment a number of times to make sure the results are the same each time. Run as many trials for the experiment (3 trials are enough) and make accurate notes after each observation. The project should be repeatable, so if someone else wants to support your findings they’ll be able to perform the same experiment and get the same results.
Conclusion
After your experiment, you now need to wrap up the science fair and conclude what happened. Now that the experimentation part is complete, you now have to interpret the results. Start by recognizing whether or not the experiment supported your hypothesis. Afterwards, you can include other things in your conclusion such as ways you could have improved the experiment and describe how the information you found can be helpful to others.
Sometimes, the scientist within you still isn't satisfied with the results and still yearns to grasp even more knowledge and information. Based on what you've learned from this experiment, you could always conduct a different experiment with a new observation you made and repeat the method to discover new findings.
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