• Question: how would you start a new investigation if it has never been done before? how would you know what to do and investigate?

    Asked by phoebejones to Laura, Nicola, Norman, Sandra, Thanasis on 12 Mar 2013.
    • Photo: Laura Soul

      Laura Soul answered on 12 Mar 2013:

      That’s a really good question and one that scientists are thinking about all the time. What usually happens is while I’m doing one investigation, or while I’m just doing normal everyday things, I’ll think of a question that I want to know the answer to. Sometimes it just pops into my head, like “I wonder why that happens?”, but other times I’m thinking about all the things I already know about something, and trying to figure out what I don’t already know.

      Once I’ve thought of my question I sit down and try to think of a way to test it, when I’m doing this I usually talk to my scientist friends or my boss. Scientists talk to each other and help each other think of ways of doing things all the time, we often work in groups as well. I also go look up research people have done before on similar things and then think of ways of improving the way they did it, or changing it so that I can use it.

      Once I’ve figured out what question I want to know the answer to, and a way to test it, then I can get started setting up my experiment and begin! A lot of the time in science when you do a new investigation for the first time, it doesn’t work quite how you thought it would, so then you just go back and try to think of a better way of testing it and start again.

    • Photo: Nicola Wardrop

      Nicola Wardrop answered on 12 Mar 2013:

      Well first of all I have to come up with the question that I want to answer…this normally happens on its own as I am reading and learning about different things, or from another piece of analysis that I have done. You all of a sudden think of something that would be really interesting to find out about.

      After that, you start to think about what ways you might be able to investigate the question. Normally the question will be similar to something you have looked at before, so you will know alot about the different types of methods you can use – even if you haven’t used them before, you can read what other people have written about them and learn from that.

      So then you have your question, and some idea of the method you need to use, but you might also need some other things such as data, so you also need to think about that. When you have the data you need (or samples, chemicals, bits and pieces or whatnot if you are doing lab work), then you can get cracking and try to answer the question. It doesn’t always work though, so you may have to change your plan and try something else.

      Normally there is quite a lot of thinking and reading (and perhaps also some writing) which needs to happen before you can actually start the investigation, but it’s all part of the fun!

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