The Scientific Process

You might remember reading about how we worked with Mrs. Towsen's class to learn how scientists use observations and inferences to help them learn more about the world around them. These last few days we added another step to our learning about the scientific process: making a hypothesis.

When scientists like us make a hypothesis, they tell you about the research question, what they think will happen, and why they think it will happen. This means that all hypotheses should include an if, a then, and a because. To learn more about making a hypothesis we did a really fun experiment with gummy bears! Our hypotheses started like this:

If you put a gummy bear in water and leave it there over night then....... because.....

Our class was split into 5 groups, and each group got 5 gummy bears: red, orange, green, yellow, and clear. Some of us predicted the gummy bears would grow larger, while other groups predicted the bears would disintegrate (Yep! we even used that word!) in the water. Some groups also talked about the fact that the bears would change color in addition to changing size.

It ended up being a messy, oozy experiment because our bears definitely changed in just one day. We used our senses (with the exception of taste!) to think about how the bears were different, and our teams took measurements when we could to prove our observations with data. This experiment helped us see how important observations are when we are trying to prove or disprove a hypothesis.

Check out some pictures as we collected information to find out if our hypotheses were correct!

Wow! It was easy to observe how the gummy bears changed size just by looking at them!

EWWWW! Our sense of touch told us they got very slimy!

We still tried to measure them very carefully so we had data to support our observations.

And then we recorded the results along with our observations.