Larsen's Scientific Method Game | Baamboozle - Baamboozle

Bob and Mary are experimenting with paper helicopters. They decided to cut the wings to see if speed can be increased. Bob drops his control aircraft from a chair. Mary is on the floor and dropping the experimental design. What's wrong?

They don't have good controlled variables. Both aircraft should be dropped from the same height.

An experiment with plants is testing the effect of increasing amounts of water and increasing sunlight availability. Why is this a bad experiment?

It has more than one independent variable. You will not know if it was the sunlight or the water that caused growth.

You have finished an experiment, gathered all your data, analyzed all the data using EXCEL, and you have come up with a conclusion. What's next?

Communicate your results.

After observing a phenomena and asking a question about it, a scientist could research that question and then they would ___________ and _______________.

Come up with their own hypothesis and design their own experiment.

After observing phenomena and asking a question about it, a scientist could propose a hypothesis, or they could ___________.

Research their question to see if someone else has already done a scientific study to answer it.

What is quantitiative data?

Data that has a number associated with it. Such as inches, centimeters, seconds, ect.

What is the difference between a question and a hypothesis?

A question follows from an interesting observation and the hypothesis is an educated guess or answer to that question.

What is a placebo? When is it used?

A placebo is a dose of "fake" medicine. It is given to the control group in a double blind experiment. Typically, these experiments test therapeutics.

In scientific experimentation, what does it mean to replicate or have replication?

You have more than one test subject per treatment (4 sheep) or you repeat the experiment more than once in order to determine how correct the results are.

A scientist who wants to study the affects of fertilizer on plants sets up an experiment. Plant A gets no fertilizer, Plant B gets 5 mg. of fertilizer each day, and Plant C gets 10mg. of fertilizer each day. Which plant is the control group

Plant A is the experimental control because it gets NO fertilizer. An experimental control is the ABSENCE of what you are testing. You need it for comparison.

When you place one of these in your scientific paper, what are you doing?

Communicating your results.

A scientist analyzes her data and says, "We gotta start this miserable experiment all over again." What is she doing?

Drawing a conclusion.

In science, an educated guess is _.

A hypothesis

After deciding to subject bean seeds to different amounts of water (1 ml, 5 ml, 10 ml) a lab technician is tasked with measuring the length of bean roots once a week. What is this experiment's dependent variable?

The length of the bean seed roots.

A middle school student wants to know if microwaving mouse food for a certain amount of time (1 min, 5 min, 10 min) will make mice stronger. What is his independent variable?

The amount of time the mouse food is microwaved.

In an experiment, the one variable that is changed, manipulated, experimented with, or decided upon by the researcher, is called the

Independent Variable

What is qualitative data?

Qualitative data can be observed and recorded. This data type is non-numerical in nature.

An experiment that tests only one factor at a time by using a comparison of a control group and an experimental group is?

A controlled experiment

Is this a rule of the scientific method? "Your hypothesis must be testable."

Yes! Your hypothesis MUST be testable.

When making a hypothesis, should you just restate the question? For example, "Does increasing the heat make seeds germinate faster?" Written as "Will more heat make germination happen quicker?"

Nope! Don't do this! Use an "if than" statement or a null hypothesis.

A scientist has recorded whale sounds. What is he doing if he calculates the average length of each whale sound he recorded?

He is analyzing data.