Scientific Method 1

... continued from yesterday
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The first class wasn't so bad.  Dr. Martin talked most of the time about the scientific method, which seemed pretty much like common sense to Stefanie. First you make a hypothesis, like the idea that all guys are stupid.

Then you test your hypothesis.  Okay, there's a guy.  Yeah, he's stupid.  Another guy... also stupid.  Wait, here's a guy who is really good at chemistry... ah, nope, he's wearing his shirt inside out. But eventually you run into a guy that isn't stupid and that blows the hypothesis--at least the hypothesis that all guys are stupid.

Other hypotheses seem to work over and over and over again. I wonder if all human beings have heads.  There's a guy with a head.  There's a girl with a head.  There's a girl with two guys and they all have heads.  You travel Europe.  You travel Africa.  But somewhere in your travels (I won't say where) you happen to come across a beheaded body lying on the ground.

So you modify the hypothesis.  All living human beings have heads.  Eventually, your hypothesis has been so successful that you turn your hypothesis into a theory.  This isn't the same as the way we use the word, "Well, that's just a theory."  In science, a theory is a hypothesis that has been tested over and over and over and over again, and it has come out right pretty much every time.  It isn't the same as a fact, but it's nowhere close to mere opinion either.

Not something she would have gone to hear if she had a choice, but Stefanie had to admit that it held her attention.

Tuesday was the first lab, and it basically turned out to be deciding whether something was a mixture or a pure substance and, if so, what kind of mixture or what kind of pure substance...