The Scientific Method: A Test
The Scientific Method: A Kid Asleep in Class
About mid-way through the semester, in a class you are taking on campus, you become
increasingly irritated by a student who sits in the back of the class. The student always
manages to fall asleep about 15 minutes into the lecture. Normally it wouldn’t bother
you, but occasionally he lets out a snore that breaks your attention and disrupts the class.
The instructor has repeatedly asked the student to work harder to stay awake, but he is
not having any success.
Use the scientific method to try and figure out why the student is
falling asleep.
- A Testable Hypothesis: It is likely that the student doesn't get enough sleep at night and therefore cannot help but fall asleep during class.
- My Test
- Describe test; how to alter conditions: I would test this hypothesis by having the student sleep the recommended 8 to 10 hours of sleep a night.
- Support my hypothesis: If the student stays awake during the lecture, it would support my hypothesis.
- Falsify my hypothesis: If the student still falls asleep, it would falsify my hypothesis.
- A Untestable Hypothesis: An example of an untestable, unfalsifiable hypothesis would be that the student is enchanted by an evil witch to sleep for the exact time of the lecture.
We have very similar hypotheses and yours is reasonable. I think your test will produce enough evidence to either substantiate or falsify your hypothesis and as for your untestable hypothesis it really is untestable because I don't think you can quantify enchantment or evil witch magic.
ReplyDeleteTestable Hypothesis (5/5) - Good.
ReplyDeleteTest (5/5) - Good test.
Support (5/5)
Falsify (5/5)
Untestable Hypothesis (7/10) - Okay, I'm going to be picky about this. Is the witch invisible/undetectable or real? It matters, because if you are hypothesizing about a real witch, we can just falsify this by observing that no witch was around to enchant him. Keep in mind that "ridiculous" isn't the same thing as "untestable". Just because something is ridiculous doesn't mean it can't be falsified. I can hypothesize that the student is a superhero and gets no sleep at night because he spends his nights flying around the city, fighting crime. Yes, ridiculous, but I can falsify this by just observing the student an noting that he doesn't leave his house at night. :-)
Now, if you specified that the witch was completely undetectable to anyone, then that would be untestable.