Scientific Method

Scientific Method

1. What is it?

   • The accepted procedure for scientific investigations, with its own rules
   • A series of steps w/ the purpose of coming up with an explanation for an observed phenomenon.

2. Steps

   • 1) Observe and Ask a Question.
     • Why do women smile more often?
     • Why won´t my internet work?
   • 2) Do background research.
     • Happiness based on gender, the science of smiling in different cultural contexts.
     • Different networking infrastructures. Internet protocols.
   • 3) Hypothesis
     • Women smile more than men because there are happier than men.
     • The internet isn’t working because the modem has a failure.
   • 4) Experimentation to test the hypothesis.
     • An oposite sex interviewer talking to a set of men and women for 5 minutes each, counting the number of times they smile, and asking them their level of happiness.
     • Check if everything is correctly plugged and doesn’t seem damaged.
   • 5) Analyze the data and draw conclusions.
     • We could have discovered that the router was off. So that was the reason the internet was´t working
     • But also the hypothesis could be incorrect. Or we could find a more interesting question to solve.
   • 6) Spread the information/share
     • A critical step is sharing the results and the specific process that was followed, even if it was a "failure".
     • If the experiment can be reproduced by other scientist getting similar results its a sign of good work.

3. History

   • Greeks were the first ones who used observation and measurement to learn about the world.
     • Some people give credit to Aristoteles, the Muslims who became its promotors or to Galileo Galilei
       • But it is best attributed to Alhazen, the father of optics
         • The process has evolved througth the years along with the interest of people

4. Troubles

   • There can be exceptions, for example when Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin, it was because he accidentally left a cover off a petri dish used to cultivate bacteria.
   • Sometimes the experimentation migth not have been carried that way although it is presented like so. The process is more like bloks of trial an error.

Bilder und Dateien der Mindmap