In preparation for our first real lab we need to introduce some new concepts and techniques. First, what is the scientific method?
The scientific method is not a straightforward clean path of incremental progress toward the truth. It has twists and turns. Scientists must often stop to revise or rethink.
The basic starting point of science is ignorance. This is what makes the science method special and different from other dogma.
Science starts with the premise that nothing in the Universe is known (or at least known for certain). We must figure it out. It starts with observations and explorations of the phenomena to detect patterns and regularities. These patterns allow one to propose an hypothesis for an underlying cause. Experiments can then be designed to test the hypothesis. The tests often go like this. Given this experimental design, the hypothesis predicts such and such. If such and such is happening or not, how confident are we about the experimental setup, the veracity of the hypothesis or any other underlying assumptions?
The hypothesis is either rejected (or modified) if it keeps failing. If it succeed, the tests continue.
In this first part of the class, we will do observing experiments.
The goal of this kind of experiment is to observe phenomena and find patterns.
The observations can be qualitative but more often we will collect numerical data. Collecting data and visualizing it properly will enable us to better quantify the patterns that we may see.
Let us now delve into the details and look at what we need to do for lab 2!
The acceleration of an object sliding (in 1 dimension) to come to a stop due to a friction.
Often scientist have such questions in mind before they start observing. In this class, our guiding questions will ensure that we are not straying too far from one another.
We will soon discuss how to do the "statistically significant" part properly. The following video demonstrate the big versus small push. Yes this is a very simple experiment!