Topic One (1.1): Asking scientific questions

Objectives

By the end of this topic you should be able to:

describe how scientists develop an idea into a question that can be investigated;
identify independent, dependent and control variables.

You might also be able to:

explain that some questions can be investigated and some cannot.

Introduction

Scientists start by asking questions and then designing experiments to help answer these questions. Let's look at how we can develop an idea into a question to be investigated and also learn about variables.

Working through your coursebook

Begin by reading pages 2–3 of Activate 1.
What is the difference between an experiment we do because it is fun and one we do to answer a scientific question? The video below should help answer this question:

WATCH - Fair test investigation (YouTube)

You can download this skill sheet, read through and keep it safe. It will be useful for investigation planning in the future. Watch out for more of these skill sheets on the course. You may want to keep them all together:

DOWNLOAD - Skill sheet: Hypothesis (Kerboodle) Links to an external site.

WATCH - What Are Independent, Dependent And Controlled Variables? (YouTube)

Have a go at thinking of some ideas and developing them into questions that you could investigate scientifically. The first one has been done for you, but see if you can come up with two more:

DOWNLOAD - WS 1.1 Support - Asking scientific questions (Kerboodle) Links to an external site.

Learning Science also means learning a new language. The keywords are listed on every topic page in Activate 1. They are also highlighted in bold on the coursebook pages and there is a helpful glossary at the back of the coursebook. Keep this glossary for Scientific Investigations keywords handy as it will help in your assignments:

DOWNLOAD - How Science Works - Glossary of Keywords Download DOWNLOAD - How Science Works - Glossary of Keywords