Complete five activities, including the one starred activity.

*1. Choose a group of up to five girls to work together as a research team. You may wish to choose a team leader and a person designated to record your discovery activities. You may also decide to take turns with these positions. You will need to record your research activities in a research log. The log should be kept in a bound notebook (not loose pages) and all information should be entered in the order you get it, similar to a diary of your activities. If you change your mind about something, you can draw a line through it and then explain your new idea. Scientists don’t erase!

Read the accompanying description of the scientific method and the list of study ideas you may want to explore.

 SCIENTIFIC METHOD

Step 1: IDENTIFY A PROBLEM

Pick a Topic - Decide on a topic that you have wondered about. Before you can study an event, you must know what you want to observe.

Research your Topic - Identify what additional information you would like to discover. Go to the library and read about your topic. Look for unexplained or unexpected events or results.

Limit your Topic - Examples are listed separately below. Narrow your topic by focusing on a particular idea. Limit your experiment to one or two specific events.

Generalize - Organize what you know about your topic. Make lists of known causes for specific events. Describe what happens when you observe the events.

Ask a Question - Phrase what you want to discover in the form of a question. Make your topic into a question. Your question should tell what you will find out.

Step 2: MAKE A HYPOTHESIS

Answer that Question - Write a sentence that answers your question. Make a guess about what you think the answer might be and record this in your log. This is your hypothesis or guess about what will happen (your prediction).

Step 3: PLAN AND DO YOUR EXPERIMENT

Plan your Research - Design an experiment that should help you see if you have guessed the correct answer to your question. This may take a lot of thinking to make up a test that will really prove what you want to know. Write a research plan. This plan explains how you will do your experiment.

Directions - You will need to write down every step that you plan to do and then follow your plan. Write step-by-step directions. This is your procedure. If you can’t follow your plan exactly for some reason, write down the reason, and what changes you had to make in your plan.

Variables - Causes that can change your experiment.

Controls - Keep some of the variables the same so the experiment is fair.

Control Experiment - Include experiments in which none of the variables change.

Conduct your Experiment - You will want to write down observations of what happens when you do the experiment in as much detail as possible. Keep detailed notes of every experiment, measurement and observation. Write these in your project logbook.

Step 4: ANALYZE YOUR DATA

Examine your Results - Carefully look over your results and findings. Do you have enough information to answer your question? Does more work need to be done or is your experiment finished? Did the results give you a definite answer whether your guess was correct? If the answer to this is "no", then you’ll want to think about how you can change the experiment to get a definite answer and do an additional experiment if possible.

Step 5: DRAW CONCLUSIONS

Wrapping-up time...If you got a definite answer to your question from your experiment, did it agree with your guess? Was your hypothesis correct? If you got a definite answer to your question (yes or no!), your experiment was a success!

If your guess was not correct, that’s O.K. If your hypothesis was wrong, you have two choices. You can do your experiment again, starting with step 3. You can also explain what was wrong with your original hypothesis. NEVER ALTER RESULTS TO FIT A THEORY. A negative result is acceptable research.

2. Describe what surprised you during the experiment. Research doesn’t usually happen just the way you expect. Did you have to make any adjustments to your plan as you went along?

3. Because of what you learned during this experiment, describe ideas for other experiments that you’d like to do to learn more about this topic.

4. Give an oral report on your project to a group. This could be your troop, school class, or another group. Demonstrate your activities as much as possible to make your report more clear to the group.

5. If group projects are allowed, enter your project in a science fair. Make sure that your display meets the requirements for the specific event at which you are showing your project. The display should help others understand your experiment. Pictures and charts can be put on a display board to make your project interesting to the visitors.

6. Visit a science fair and make a list of five projects that you especially liked. For each of these five, write down the topics explored. Also write down for each of the five projects, a question that comes to your mind as something you’d like to know more about regarding the topic.

SAMPLE STUDY IDEAS

        Which type of wood gives the most heat when burned?

        What is best to use to melt ice on a driveway?

        Does a high suds shampoo clean hair the best?

        Do interruptions in study time hurt one’s ability to learn the material?

        What fertilizer works the best?

        What conditions make cheese grow mold more quickly?

        Which laundry detergent works best on grass stain?

        What effect does a type of pollution (you pick) have on plants?

        Do left-handed people see optical illusions differently than right-handed people?

        Can persons study better with music playing?