Science Skills Creativity and the formal process

What is creativity and what does it have to do with science?

Creativity is the process of having original ideas that have value.

How will we use it? A bunch of ways! ●  Brainstorming ●  Idea sessions (both radical and real) ●  Group work ●  Learning to view failure as an opportunity to learn, and not a death sentence

to an idea

FAILURE

FAILURE

FAILURE

The Process In science we embrace both creativity and opportunity to learn from failure through a formal process commonly referred to as the “scientific method”.

The Process This is probably how you learned it. Yuck! Too simple. Science is way more messy, exciting, circular, collaborative and unpredictable than that.

The Process The real process of science

Exploration and Discovery

Scientific Testing – The heart of the process

The scientific community helps ensure science’s accuracy

Science and Society

Some terms Ok, now that we know what science really is let’s look at some terms we need to be able to understand to practice one part of science- experimentation.

Variables Variables are factors that change during an experiment Independent variable: variable that is purposely changed during an experiment Dependent variable: variable that changes in response to purposeful change (I.V.) Control variable: variable that all others will be compared to

Other terms Constants: Experimental aspects that are kept the same for all trials ●  There should be numerous constants per experiment (We’ll always shoot for at least five)

Procedure: step by step instructions of what you will do (detailed enough that anyone could repeat your experiment exactly the way you did it) Hypothesis: If (planned change in independent variable), then (predicted change in dependent variable) OR, Another way to look at it… If (I do this), then (this) will happen.

How can we then test our hypothesis?

Scientific Testing

Practice We want to test if adding the commerical fertilizer Miracle-Gro is more effective than good old fashioned cow poo.