A hypothesis is an important factor of your experiment. It is your educated guess as to what you expect to happen. You develop this hypothesis from the information you gained in your research process last week and use it to make a prediction of how you suspect your experiment to work out. This is the cornerstone of your experiment because it reminds you of what you are testing. When inserted into your report, it advises your reader what your expectations were.

The statement will usually take the form of “If ________, then _________ will happen”.

Watch the below video to understand how to write a hypothesis. 

Design Your Experiment

Before you can do an experiment, first you will need to design the experiment. 

The first step to doing this, you will need to determine what your dependent and independent variables are. Your independent variable is the variable you change to assess the outcome. The dependent variable is the outcome you’re assessing.

For example, you’re testing the speed the toy car rolls down the ramp based on the degrees the plank sits at (the car would remain the same, but you would retest using different angles of the plank).

The independent variable is the degree the plank sits at. The dependent variable is the speed of the car.

The variables you need to factor into your experiment are;

• The weight of the car
• The length of the board
• The angle of the board from the ground (helps to calculate the slope)
• Your lab equipment (time keeping device, scales, etc.)

Please come to me for help if you need assistance designing your experiment.