The Quicker Picker Upper – Scientific Method

Problem - You have just arrived home after school and you toss your back pack on the dining room table. Disaster strikes! The water bottle in your bag leaks out all over your new library books. You must absorb the water with paper towels. You run to the kitchen to get some and find not one, not two, not three, not four, but five different brands. Which do you choose?

Purpose – Your purpose is to determine through scientific experimentation which brand of paper towels is best at absorbing water. In other words, which is the quicker picker upper?

Materials – water, four brands of paper towels, measuring tools (beakers?, graduated cylinders?, volumetric pipets?, rulers?, clocks?, electronic balance?, what else?)

What will you do?

1. As a group please “muck around” and determine how things work (make observations). Will you cut the paper towels? Will you roll them? How will you measure absorbency?

2. Based on your observations, write your hypothesis (often called an educated guess). Sometimes an “if ____ then” statements works. Every group member should have a copy of your hypothesis.

 Good – The ______paper towels will be the quicker picker upper.

 Better - The ______paper towels will absorb water faster than all others.

 Best - The ______paper towels show a faster rate of water absorption than all others tested.

3. Begin to design an experiment to determine which is the quicker picker upper.

4. Refine your design so that you can perform multiple trails, collect quantitative data, and produce predictable results.

5. Write down your procedure. Every group member should have a copy of this. 6. Run your experiment. Collect raw data. Design a data table and record results. Every group member should have a copy of the data.

7. Represent your data with a picture. Will you make a bar graph? Line graph? Histogram? Everyone should have a copy of this picture. This can be computer generated and shared electronically.

8. Decide to accept or reject your hypothesis.

9. Brainstorm what worked and what didn’t. What improvements could you make? Where were your sources of error (remember that there is no “human error”)? What alternative hypotheses might you suggest?

10. Begin to work on lab presentations. Rubric is available.

Important to know for conversations about science and the scientific method:

Scientific method -

Hypothesis –

Scientific theory –

Scientific law –

Dependent (or responding) variable –

Independent (or manipulating) variable –

Quantitative data –

Qualitative data –

Raw data -

Controls –

Error (remember that there is no such thing as human error) –

Why do we have a scientific method?

What is science anyway?

Graphing . . . Brain storm the problems that you faced. Write them down below – one per group.