Last week, Hurricane Sandy ripped through the Northeast
meaning that everyone went out and stocked up on...
bottled water
non-perishable food items
and flashlights.
and the last one got me thinking about the scientific method
I remember back in elementary or middle school when I was
first learning about science and the scientific method
that my textbook illustrated the concept using the problem of a broken flashlight.
This means that in college when I was in lab, and 
frustrated and angry about why my experiment wasn't working
and my hypothesis wasn't right, and what was 
happening, and my data didn't look right
I would pause and step back
and mentally go back to the problem of the broken flashlight
to try and figure out where I'd gone wrong.
So, I know that for some people the 
scientific method is a really basic concept
but it's really important and it's the foundation of every good experiment
and the broken flashlight has carried throughout my entire scientific career.
People will break the scientific method down in slightly different ways 
but I have broken it down into 5 simple steps...
Step One: is your question
Now, every lab and every experiment begins with a question
and some of those questions are big and 
broad like "How does your brain work?"
and others are small and detailed like "How does 
myelin impact axon signal propagation in your neurons?"
but each of them is a question.
Today, our question is "why won't my flashlight work?"
Step Two: is background research
So, before you go barreling into and experiment, you want 
to find out what other people have done before.
This way you can make an informed guess 
about what might be the problem 
and what ways you might try and go about solving it.
Step Three: is your hypothesis
So after you do your research your next step is to 
make an educated guess about what your problem might be.
I found in my research that sometimes if your light bulb is broken 
then your flashlight won't turn on and that makes sense to me.
It is very possible that I have a bad light bulb here.
So, that is my hypothesis. I think that my flashlight 
is not turning on because the bulb is bad.
Step Four: is experiment. It's probably the coolest step.
So, now that you have your hypothesis you have to go 
about testing to see whether or not it's right.
So, I'm going to replace the bulb in my flashlight and 
then turn it on and see if it works!
Now, it's important that at this step all I am doing is collecting data
I am not making any judgements, I am not coming 
to any conclusions. I am just seeing what happens.
And the flashlight still doesn't work...
Step Five: is analyze
Step Five: is analyze and conclude, but it 
sounded cooler when it was just "analyze".
So, now we look at our data, try and 
make sense of it, and move forwards!
So, I saw that my flashlight did not turn 
on after I replaced the bulb and therefore
I am going to conclude that the bulb was not my issue, 
or that if it was, it was not my only issue.
So, now we're done!
NO! No we are not done!
If science just stopped every time a hypothesis 
was wrong we would never get anywhere!
No. Now we go back to step three: hypothesis
My first hypothesis was wrong so I'm going to make a new one.
I think my flashlight might need new batteries.
Well, what do you know!
Go forth. Do science.
