My Journey Through Astronomy

  Doing Science! So on our last STP meeting, we really got down to the nitty gritty of everything we needed for our little experiment. As simple as our experiment might be, we are performing science so no shortcuts are to be taken. So we had to go through all the details, and this is what we got Hypothesis  If the height of the top of the ramp increases, then the maximum velocity the cart will also increase. Dependent Variable      Maximum velocity of the cart in meters per second. Independent Variable Height of the top of the ramp in centimeters.   Sounds simple enough. But if we want to do this right, and be able to compare our data correctly with others, we have to account for a lot of things and make sure we have the same constants. And there's a lot of constants we really got to think about.   Constants   The constants we had to think of:  The material of the ramp.  The length of the ramp The exact release point of the cart. The wei...

Reflection 1: Umbrellaology Defining Science  What is science? I describe science to be the way to understand everything around us. From the subatomic to the universal, things are happening. Action and reactions are occurring and for us to understand and explain these things, we use science. There is a method to it, the scientific method. Basically we start with observation. We look, taste, touch, feel, or use any other way to observe an occurrence. We try to find some sort of pattern and ask ourselves questions like "why?", "how?", and most importantly, "what if?" This "what if?" leads us to our hypothesis. A prediction base on our observations of what would happen if some variable was changed. We perform an experiment based around this hypothesis, changing the variables in question. The outcome of the experiment may or may not support our hypothesis, but we must document everything we do, refine our hypothesis if not supported by the experimen...

  Hello Everyone! This is my first post.  This blog was created for the STP (Science, Thoughts, and Practices) program and will be used to respond to reflections. But I do hope to continue using this blog for more than just that. I want this to eventually become my place to document my journey and write down my thoughts.  Welcome to the ride!