Review the key concepts, formulae, and examples before starting your quiz.
🔑Concepts
A scientific question is a question that can be answered by observing, measuring, or performing an experiment.
Scientists use their five senses to make observations about the world around them, such as noticing that (water) changes state when heated.
A 'testable' question often follows a specific pattern, such as: 'How does changing affect ?'
In a Fair Test, we only change one variable at a time while keeping everything else the same (constant).
Scientific questions often involve measurements of physical quantities like length (), mass (), time (), or temperature ().
A prediction is a sensible guess of what might happen in an experiment, based on what you already know.
📐Formulae
💡Examples
Problem 1:
Which of the following is a better scientific question for an experiment: 'Do plants like music?' or 'Does a plant grow taller if it is given of water instead of ?'
Solution:
The second question: 'Does a plant grow taller if it is given of water instead of ?'
Explanation:
This is a scientific question because it is 'testable'. You can measure the height of the plant in and control the amount of provided.
Problem 2:
If you are testing which ball bounces the highest, and you drop Ball A from and Ball B from , is this a fair test?
Solution:
No, it is not a fair test.
Explanation:
To make it a fair test, you must keep the drop height () the same for both balls. If and , you are changing two things at once: the type of ball and the height.
Problem 3:
A student wants to know how temperature affects the time it takes for sugar to dissolve. Identify the variable to be measured.
Solution:
The time in seconds or minutes.
Explanation:
The student is changing the temperature () to see how it affects the speed of dissolving, which is recorded as the time () elapsed.