Answer the questions alongside the text. Whatever branch a scientist is

Answer the questions alongside the text. Whatever branch a scientist is interested in, he observes things and asks questions about them. What is that structure for? How does it work? Why is the animal behaving like this? Why are weeds growing here but not there? Testing hypotheses Suppose we want to know why a certain type of plant grows well in place A but badly in place B. The first thing to do is to put forward a possible reason. Scientists call this a hypothesis. The next step is to test this hypothesis to find out if it is true or not. This is done by carrying out an experiment. Scientists often investigate things by first thinking of a hypothesis, and then testing it by observing things or by doing experiments. This procedure is sometimes called the scientific method. Doing experiments Suppose we want to test the hypothesis that light is needed for the leaves of a young plant to become green. We obtain a Plant and put it in the dark. If the green colour fails to develop, we will conclude that light is needed for it. However there is something more that we must do: we must obtain a second plant and put it in the light. We need this second plant in order to provide a standard with which to compare the first plant. The second plant is called the control. In carrying out experiments it is essential that the two plants should be kept in exactly the same conditions, except for the light they receive. To put it in a general way: we keep all the variables constant except for the one whose effect we want to investigate. An experiment of this kind, in which the experimenter controls the conditions, is called a controlled experiment. a What does research start from? b What is a hypothesis? c What is an experiment for? d What is scientific method? e What is the control? f What are the necessary conditions for testing a hypothesis?