Science Buddies: "Ask an Expert"

My daughters are working on project together, they each have their own hypothesis. Is it ok to use both of them or do they need to work together to come up with the one that is the best educated guess. thanks in advance

One of the objects of the scientific method is to verify a hypothesis. It sounds like you have an interesting starting point; multiple hypotheses that can be evaluated with experimentation to potentially eliminate one of them. If you can successfully do that, you can concentrate your project in supporting the remaining hypothesis. Documenting your work in eliminating one of the original ideas should be included in your written description of the project.

Rick Marz

Hi,

Hmm, wouldn't that only work if the hypotheses were not contradictory? Meaning, the two hypotheses were not "the sky is blue" and "the sky is red" but more like "the sky is blue" and "the sky has clouds"

I think that as long as it is more like the latter situation, multiple hypotheses are fine, since it adds to what the project entails. If it is like the former situation, I would think it may not be something you should do.

But maybe I'm wrong, can you tell us more about the project/hypotheses specifically

Sciencebuddy is right. The hypotheses can't be contradictory. Also, generally if you have multiple hypotheses, each one is stating something about a different variable. For example, let's say that the experiment is a ball rolling and I stop it, then what just happened? I hypothesize that the energy in the ball will convert from kinetic to static. and I also hypothesize that the coefficient of friction will change. These hypotheses are about different variables, energy and friction.

let me know if you have any more questions

good luck,
scienceexpert123