What is science? Doing an experiment

What is science? Doing an experiment

I. What is science

A. The 4 steps to thinking like a scientist

B. Experiments are the distinguishing feature of science

C. Experiments involve the addition or removal of something that is compared to the unaltered situation (control)

D. Understanding experiments is essential in judging scientific claims

II. Heart rate experiment

A. Purpose of the experiment

B. Analyze heart beat number as a function of time

C. Identifying variables and graphing an independent vs a dependent variable

D. Designing and carrying out an experiment

E. Graphing the results of the experiment and interpreting the data

Study Question:

  1. What are the four steps to “doing science”?

  2. What is a hypothesis?

  3. What are data?

  4. What distinguishes how knowledge is created in science from other disciplines?

  5. How is data different from an interpretation?

  6. In the heart rate experiment, why should you repeat the “baseline” heart rate assay if you switched which lab partner was the experimental subject?

  7. In an experiment comparing the effects of 2 different chemotherapeutic drugs on the size of a tumor, what would be the dependent and independent variables?

Powerpoint below