Scientific Method and Graphing

Scientific Method and Graphing

Objectives - Students will be able to:

1.Explain what an independent and a dependent variable are.

2.Properly label a data table and graph

3.Create a graph from a data table

Scientific Method

Hopefully, this is a review for most of you.

By the raise of hands, what are the steps to the scientific

method?

Scientific Method

Make an observation

Form an educated guess (hypothesis)

Test hypothesis*

Form a rule

* It is ok for the test to show that your hypothesis was wrong

Variables

We will spend most of our lab time doing experiments and

trying to understand the data.

Variable ¨C Something that changes

How many variables are there in any given experiment?

Independent variable ¨C the one variable that is deliberately

changed

Dependent variable ¨C the one variable that is affected by

the independent variable; this is what you measure

Control variable ¨C any variable that is held constant; there

can be many variables in this category

Variables

Check for understanding ¨C You¡¯re tapping the gas pedal in

your car to see what happens to the A/C. Identify the

independent and the dependent variable.

Check for understanding ¨C You¡¯re adding water to juice to

see how diluted it gets. Which are the independent,

dependent, and control variables?

Data Tables and Graphs

During the experiment, we measure how much each

variable changes. At the end, we have a lot of data that

needs to be put in some format that makes it easy for

people to understand. For this, we use data tables and

graphs.

Check for understanding ¨C With your table partner, come

up with at least three examples of where you see data

shown in a table and three examples of where you see data

shown in a graph.

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