(Requires Previous Completion of the Discoverer Patch)

Complete four activities including the one starred and either #3 or #4.

*1. Choose a group of up to five girls to work together as a research team. Choose a team leader and a team recorder. Determine an area your team would like to explore. Use the steps of the scientific method as you work through your problem and record your results.

Prepare a hypothesis. Agree on a topic to test and determine your guess as to the results of your experiment.

Prepare an experimental plan. Discuss and make a rough draft of the type of experiment you think you would like to do.

Contact a person with knowledge in this particular field. Ask that person for suggestions on how you might start your exploring. Discuss your possible hypothesis for a "step a" with the person. Revise your hypothesis as desired. Discuss your experimental plan with your mentor and when a plan is finalized, proceed with your exploring.

Follow your procedure. Record your research activities in a research log book with numbered pages. Enter data as you work; do not erase anything in the log book. If a change needs to be made, draw a line through the information to be corrected and write the new information near it or indicate with an asterisk where the new information is written.

Analyze your data. Carefully look over your results. 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 this additional experiment if possible. You may wish to contact your special person to help you with this.

Draw conclusions:

Did your data give results that agreed with your hypothesis? Your experiment is valid if you either proved or disproved your hypothesis. Disproving a hypothesis is just as important a scientific work as proving a hypothesis.

Describe what happened that was unexpected during the experiment. Record any adjustments you had to make to your plan as you went along.

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.

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

3. If group projects are allowed, enter your project in a science fair; either your school’s, area’s or the Mitten Bay Girl Scout Council Science Safari. Make sure that your display meets the requirements for the specific event at which you are showing your project. The display should help other Girl Scouts understand your experiment. Pictures and charts can be put on a display board to make your project interesting to the visitors.

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

5. Visit a local science museum such as the Midland Hall of Ideas or Sloan Museum. Write a one page report on what you saw that was especially interesting.