MOGCHS

High School Science I (Integrated Science)

Name:______________________Year/Section_____________________________

Teacher:____________________Date:___________Score_______________

Investigating (Scientific Method)

Why do we need to acquire investigation skills? The answer is straight-forward. Everybody needs to investigate not only to gain knowledge but also to clarify or verify what is already known. A doctor asks questions about what your complaint is before he or she conducts tests. A fishpond owner investigates what causes fish kill. A farmer studies the effects of a particular pesticide on locusts that eat rice plants. A cook determines the best combination of ingredients for his or her new recipe. A teacher needs to determine why students are not doing well in class.

Investigating involves several steps, namely: identifying the problem; gathering information about the problem; formulating a hypothesis; designing experiments to test the hypothesis; collecting, recording and organizing data; analyzing and interpreting data; making conclusions based on the data gathered; and writing the report.

The following example shows how a student solved a problem using the steps enumerated above.

Molly observed that the soil in his father’s garden is sandy. Few plants grow in their garden. He thought that adding moss to the sand would improve its water holding capacity. He knows that roots of plants improve the water holding capacity of soils.

He collected sand and sieved it. He also collect moss and dried it. Then he prepared 5 cans of the same kind and size, weighted the different amounts of sand and moss as shown in the table (below), and put them in corresponding cans, He added 120 mL of water to each setup, He collected and measured the amount of water that passed through in 10 minutes. He recorded the observations in his notebook and repeated the activity three times after 30-minute interval for each trial.

His experiment was designed as follows:

Setups	Amount of Sand (g)	Amount of Dry Moss (g)
Can A	100	0
Can B	80	20
Can C	60	40
Can D	50	50
Can E	40	60

The data collected are shown below:

Setups	Trial 1 (mL)	Trial 2 (mL)	Trial 3 (mL)
Can A	112	116	112
Can B	96	94	93
Can C	80	82	83
Can D	78	76	80
Can E	54	58	58

Self Assessment Question (SAQ) Identify and describe the following parts of the investigation: (5) points each item.

a. problem that Molly wanted to solve________________________________________

b. hypothesis or the possible effect of adding moss to sand_____________________

_________________________________________________________________________

c. basis for the hypothesis__________________________________________________

_________________________________________________________________________

d. design to test the hypothesis_____________________________________________

_________________________________________________________________________

e. dependent and independent variables in the experiment_____________________

_________________________________________________________________________

f. control setup_____________________________________________

_______________________________________________________

g. experimental design____________________________________________________

_______________________________________________________

Parents Signature/Date

Mother:___________

Father:____________

Science Activity No 3

Norven Baylan-MT II, MA-IDT

Science Teacher

MOGCHS, Cagayan de Oro

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