Science Buddies: "Ask an Expert"

Hi, I need help finishing up my science project.

I need to complete a science project relating to agriculture. At first, I was going to use the predicting weather project Science Buddies has, but discovered it was too difficult to determine the correctness of estimating the weather. I eventually changed to this new project, Dry Spells, Wet Spells: How Common Are They.

Now that I have spent the entire day completing this project, I am not sure what the project is.I need help forming a hypothesis and deciding what to do with the histograms and data I have in my charts.

I know that weather and precipitation plays a huge role in agriculture. I am looking for any ideas on how to tie this data into a science project.

I guess I am confused what scientific question I am trying to ask, what type of hypothesis I should be forming, and if the experiment has dependent, independent, and constant variables. Any advice of help will be appreciated.

That is a super cool project! If I were you, I would do more reaserch and see what the project topic means and what it it's objective. When you have the background knowledge, then you will be able to create your hypothesis. Wish you luck!

Thanks!

Before I started I researched all the terms and read articles. I just don't know how to turn this into a science project. Step one on the project is to do background research. So I did. I also read online articles relating wet and dry spells to agriculture.

Hi, Criv6!

This sounds like an interesting project! When I looked at the project info on its Science Buddies page, which can be found here: https://www.sciencebuddies.org/science- ... ml#summary, I saw that this project is not an experiment, but a study. Basically, this project looks to answer questions like "Which part of the country has the most frequent droughts? The most frequent periods of prolonged rain? The most consistent precipitation?" through the comparison of preexisting data rather than manipulating variables to see cause and effect.

So, if you are allowed to conduct a science project that isn't an experiment, then you can go ahead and form your hypothesis based on your background research and the scientific question(s) you are trying to answer with your data. For instance, if you want to know "Which part of the country has the most frequent droughts?", then you can use your research on parts of the country with dry climates or little rainfall to predict what part of the country your data will indicate as having the most frequent droughts.

However, if you are required to conduct an experiment, then don't fret! You can use the data you collected here to serve as background info for your real project. If you want to do something related to agriculture then you can do something simple like test the effect of different amounts of water on different crop growths. Or you could test how different watering schedules, which mimic the irregular precipitation of different areas, affect crop growths. There is a plethora of exciting possibilities!:)

Please let us know if you have any further questions.
Trystan

Thank you for your help. I am going to look further into this. This information is definitely helpful! I will let you know what I end up doing.