Edison U. Ratio Smart: Teaching Thinking Skills: Scientific Thinking: Why is the Sky Blue?

Scientific Thinking: Why Is the Sky Blue?

If you love to ask questions, then you’re on the road to scientific thinking. You guessed it, scientific thinking is thinking like a scientist thinks. In fact there is a special name for the way a scientist thinks. It is called the scientific method. Since science fair time is rapidly approaching or maybe it’s just speed by, I thought we should look at the scientific method. And if you haven’t already guessed by my lab coat, I love being a scientist. Grab a lab coat, magnifying glass, note book and a test tube as we blast into the world of science.

Let’s take a few minutes to explore the steps of the scientific method.

1^st – Ask a question – The question will not have a yes or no answer. You shouldn’t know the answer to the question. It will be a question that leads to discovery like:

“Why is the sky blue?”

“How do birds fly?

“How long will the flavor last in my chewing gum?”

“How long does it take an apple to rot?”

2^nd – Check, out what others have discovered about your question. This is very important. The Wright Brothers didn’t start building airplanes from scratch. They read and learned all they could about others experiments, successes and failures. This may seem like a lot of work at first but in the long run it saves you lots of time.

3^rd – Make a hypothesis. Think of a hypothesis as an “I think …” sentence. What do you think will happen when you do your experiment? Yes, you will be doing an experiment. Think about the experiment you want to do. What do you think will happen when you do this experiment? These are a couple of simple, sample hypothesis below.

1. I think the flavor of my gum will last for 20 minutes.

2. I think it will take an apple 5 days to rot if I put it in a damp, dark place.

3. I think I can create a larger explosion in my volcano by mixing 4 cups of baking soda and 1 cup of vinegar.

Did you notice this each questions has a way to test it or an experiment as part of the question?

4^th – Conduct an experiment. Let’s create an experiment for one of the hypothesis above.

1. Chew your gum for 20 minutes. How much flavor does it have? How can you test the change in flavor? Have someone, in fact have several people, chew gum for 20 minutes. What do they say about the flavor? Do their answers change after chewing gum for 25 minutes? 30 minutes?

5^th – As you conduct your experiment, record the data (information). Take pictures, make charts, create a scale, do whatever it takes to get accurate, factual information. Made up data is no good.

6^th – Analyze your data – What do all those facts, figures, charts, pictures and scales tell you? This is one of the hardest parts of being a scientist. For right now, think of it as looking at your clues. Think about those clues. What do they tell you when you put them altogether? This is tough. To become a master at analyzing data takes practice, practice and more practice.

7^th – Communicate, communicate, communicate – Share your results with everyone. Can you imagine what our world would be like if Philo Farnsworth hadn’t communicated his discovery of television? Would we be sitting around starting at the walls at night or would someone else have invented the T.V.? Make sure when you communicate your results they are understandable. No matter how great your discovery is, if others don’t understand it won’t go far.

That will do for now. In future post, we’ll look at the steps a bit more. We’ll look at resources, websites and ideas for science fair projects.

Until next time, start looking at your world. What do you wonder about?

Signing off,