How do scientists design experiments?

As an Open University tutor my students often had zero experience in science. At our second tutorial we would design and carry out an experiment. First we needed to identify something to be tested. I told them we would be testing 'the coefficients of restitution of a variety of spherical objects - or, bouncy ball time'. read more

The design of experiments is a discipline unto itself: Design of experiments The Scientific Method can be part of this, for questions of cause, classification, and localization, but it is not directly applicable in questions of optimal value, existence, and effect. Other key issues: Some input variables typically cannot be controlled. read more

Variables vary: They change, they differ, and they are not the same. A well-designed experiment needs to have an independent variable and a dependent variable. The independent variable is what the scientist manipulates in the experiment. The dependent variable changes based on how the independent variable is manipulated. read more