Day Three

Talk about process regarding car that does not start, what do you do?

If a car does not start, the most important thing to do is get help but first make a guess yourself. Prior to your car not starting, you should always be prepared with blankets, and extra warm clothes in your car in cause your car gets shut down for a long period of time in the cold winter. The first thing to do is look into the car at any problems that may be arising. Does the car have enough gas? Is the gas frozen? Is the engine fixed? If it’s something simple that you can fix yourself than you should do it. If it’s something tough that you need a mechanic for than you should call someone. You could call a friend or parent who knows a lot about cars. Something that you should not do is PANIC. Panicking in any situation is only going to make the situation worse for yourself and anyone you are with. You can make an educated guess yourself about what might be wrong with the car. If you have a guess you could call the auto shop and they could lead you step by step to help yourself with the car. If not, they will send someone out. You need to keep trying and fixing your car until you find the problem causing your car not to start.

I had this happen with myself and it turned out that the gas had frozen because it was cold and winter time. So now, I have learned from my mistakes and am sure to ALWAYS have my tank filled with enough gas.

What is the scientific method? Explain the process and the steps?
The scientific method is a process for experimenting that is used to observe and explore the questions that scientists have. It helps to get a direct focus on what the scientist is trying to explore, and an organized way to execute a plan.


The first step is to ask a question. In asking a question you need to ask a question about something you have observed. Ask how, what who, where, and why something is happening. The question must be about something you are able to measure.

The next step is to do research. Doing research will help you put together information regarding your question and stay away from any misguided information you may of have before. It's important to have some research so you know what is going on in your experiment.

The next step is to form a hypothesis. This is an educated guess about the question you are trying to solve. This should be an "If....Than" statement.

The next step is to test your hypothesis. This should be done through experimenting.

The next step is to analyze your date and make a conclusion. This means you are going back, looking at your experiment results and concluding is your hypothesis is true or false. If the hypothesis was false, you go back and start over with a new hypothesis. It's important to create a new hypothesis in order to learn from the experiment. If your hypothesis was true, than you report your results to peers, or at a science fair. Often times professional scientists will publish their results in a scientific journal article or a conference.

Relate the scientific process to the experiment that you performed on surfaces and liquids.

The experiment I did with surfaces and liquids directs somewhat to the scientific method. Prior to doing the experiment, we came up with a question that we wanted to answer. We wanted to know the results of mixing liquids with water. How would certain liquids react? I came up with a list of liquids that I though would create an interesting reaction. The background research I had was from prior science experiments in high school. I knew that vinegar separates in water,  and food dye spreads. Other than that there was not much research I could do. My overall hypothesis was that "If we mix certain liquids with water, there will be a reaction." The next step was to go out and test this at home. We tested with ten different liquids and this was crucial because there was a lot of different results.
After experimenting we were able to conclude that our hypothesis was true, and that there was a reaction most of the time. In some cases there was not a liquid reaction. Today in class we are going to report and compare our results, much like professional scientists would. It's important that we compare results with our peers because some people may have left their liquids to react for longer periods of time, causing a different result.