Basics 1

Observations (Data)

Identifying Patterns and Regularities (in the Data)

Forming Hypothesis

Making Predictions and Collecting more Observations

• Observations and experiments must be reported in such a way that anyone with the proper equipment can verify the results.
  Scientific results must be reproducible.

• Scientists are not required to observe nature with an `open mind', with no preconceptions about what they are going to find. Usually most experiments and observations are designed and undertaken with a specific hypothesis in mind, and most researchers have a preconception whether that hypothesis is right or wrong. The most important point about the scientific method is that scientists have to believe the results of their experiments and observations, whether they fit preconceived notions or not.

• The cycle is continuous; it has no end. Science does not provide final answers, nor is it the search for the ultimate truth. Instead it is a way of producing successively more detailed and exact descriptions of wider and wider areas of the physical world, descriptions that allow us to predict more of the behavior of that world with higher and higher level of confidence.