Exploring the Investigative World of Science
NoteWhat This Chapter Covers
This chapter is not about memorising facts — it is about learning how facts are found. We begin in the most ordinary place imaginable, a kitchen, with a puffing puri, and discover that the way a scientist thinks about it is exactly the way you can think about it. Along the way you will learn how to turn idle wonder into a scientific question, how to tell apart the things you can change in an experiment from the things you can measure, why a good experiment changes only one thing at a time, and why a careful record of what you see is as important as the experiment itself. We finish with a map of the whole year’s journey — from invisible microbes to the planet we all share.
Learning Outcomes
By the end of this chapter, you will be able to:
- explain what makes a question a scientific question — one you can investigate, not just argue about;
- describe the steps of a systematic investigation: observe, question, experiment, record, and explain;
- identify the variables in an experiment and sort them into what you change/control and what you observe/measure;
- design a fair test by changing only one variable at a time and keeping the rest the same;
- appreciate that science is everywhere, that even simple everyday events are not fully understood, and that you can be an investigator.