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A Guide to Science Fair Projects

What is the Scientific Method?

by Sheldon Greaves

Most school books on science will tell you that the Scientific Method is a series of steps scientists use for doing science. They drone on about a "hypothesis", doing an experiment designed to test the hypothesis, comparing the results to the hypothesis, and then revising the hypothesis based on the results.

The truth is, most real scientists don't do it quite that way. A better definition of the scientific method is "finding answers to questions while taking care that you're not fooling yourself".

Much of what scientists do involves looking at the world and asking questions. "How does that work?" "How did it get that way?" "Why did this happen?" Many discoveries happen when a scientist is working along and notices something that looks a little odd. Upon taking a closer look, they realize that they've discovered something new. It's a sort of "hey, shine the light over there" kind of approach.

Of course, for a science fair project it helps to be a little more formal. You build a project and develop an experiment to learn more about your problem. The process of experimentation, recording and analyzing data is intended to keep you from fooling yourself. This means that someone else can do what you did and get the same result, so it's important to set up your project carefully, and make sure every step is well-documented. If you continually be on guard against fooling yourself, you will learn to do good science, even if you don't follow the "proper steps" normally associated with the "Scientific Method".