What You Should Learn

Identify biological problems and questions that can be answered through scientific investigations. Develop questions for investigation from a given topic or problem.

The Written Lesson

There are many questions in the world that need answering. A great many of those questions are scientific. A scientific question can pertain to any of the many science disciplines, such as chemistry, physics, astronomy, biology, archaeology….the list goes on and on.

“Why is the sky blue?”
“How does a hydrogen engine work?”
“Do fish have sex?”

Not all questions are scientific questions. Asking someone if they like horses better than dogs is not a scientific question. It is an opinion question. Any question that asks for an opinion is NOT a scientific question.

In this class, we will be dealing with scientific questions regarding biology (the science dealing with the study of living things). You have probably asked yourself many questions concerning biology throughout your life. For example, when you were a child you may have wondered how a caterpillar turns into a butterfly or where human babies come from…not from mommy’s bellybutton!!

Some biological questions can be tested very easily, such as “does the intensity of light affect how well a plant grows”, while other biological questions are much more difficulty to answer, such as “what causes cancer”. Many scientists spend the majority of their life trying to answer one scientific question. They perform scientific investigations in an attempt to obtain the answer to their question.

Scientific questions are tested and very often answered with scientific investigations (also called experiments). A scientific investigation is a process that is carried out to answer a scientific question. You have probably heard about many parts of the scientific method, such as hypothesis, data, and conclusion for example. We will go into more detail concerning the scientific method later. First you must be able to identify a scientific “problem” that can be answered through scientific investigations and develop questions for that given topic or problem.