Extensive practice consists of watching a daytime drama on television, listening to a local radio program, or au¬diting a class. Creative teachers everywhere have developed strategies for checking student progress such as requiring a summary of the plot | MODEL TEST 9 471 In summary the idealized scientific method proceeds as follows Observation . The scientific method begins with the collection of a set of observed facts. Hypothesis . A model is proposed to explain the observed facts and to make new predictions. A proposed model is often called a hypothesis which essentially means an educated guess. Further observations experiments . The model s predictions are tested through further observations or experiments. When a prediction is verified we gain confidence that the model truly represents nature. When a prediction fails we recognize that the model is flawed and we therefore must refine or discard the model. Theory. A model must be continually challenged with new observations or experiments by many different scientists. A model achieves the status of a scientific theory only after a broad range of its predictions has been repeatedly verified. Note that while we can have great confidence that a scientific theory truly represents nature we can never prove a theory to be true beyond all doubt. Therefore even well-established theories must be subject to continuing challenges through further observations and experiments. In reality scientific discoveries rarely are made by a process as mechanical as the idealized scientific method described here. For example Johannes Kepler who discovered the laws of planetary motion in the early 1600s tested his model against observations that had been made previously rather than verifying new predictions based on his model. Moreover like most scientific work Kepler s work involved intuition collaboration with others moments of insight and luck. Nevertheless with hindsight we can look back at Kepler s theory and see that other scientists eventually made plenty of observations to verify the planetary positions predicted by his model. In that sense the scientific method represents an ideal prescription for judging objectively whether a proposed model of nature is close to the truth. .
