Use Scientific Thinking Tkill of Problem Solving

Use your scientific thinking skills

instead of jumping to the obvious conclusion.

1. Identify the problem. Kids are sick and

you want to find out what caused the

problem.

2. Collect information/investigate. So

you found out that the hot-dog eaters got sick

and the brown baggers didn’t. Keep going.

Ask questions that will take you scientifically

to a conclusion before you leap to one. Did

some students who ate hot dogs not end

up vomiting? Did they all have mustard or

ketchup or relish? Did something else come

with the hot dogs, like chips or pickles?

Were all the sickies from the same lunch

period?

Expand your research to the kitchen. Did

the same cafeteria server handle hamburgers

and hot dogs? Did only one server handle

the dogs? Did anybody in the kitchen get

sick? Are there any toxic substances near

the hot-dog-preparation area? Check out the

hot-dog oven. What about pans and serving

platters? Did anybody examine those hot

dog buns? Are there uncooked hot dogs lying

around? Never shortcut the informationgathering

step in a scientific investigation.

3. Form your hypothesis. Maybe, after all

your investigations, you still blame the hot

dogs. In your opinion, the hot dogs are

26 Problem Solving

Never shortcut

the informationgathering

step

in a scientific

investigation.

responsible for student sickness that

afternoon. That’s your theory, your

hypothesis.

4. Draw your conclusions. You can’t do that

until you test your hypothesis, right? If

you’re brave, you might run your own

experiment and eat one of the suspect hot

dogs. Or you can ask your science teacher to

run a substance analysis on a hot dog. The

fourth step is the time to test your theory

and confirm your hypothesis or adjust your

conclusion.

You decide that you’re not brave, so you

don’t eat the hot dog. Your teacher examines

the food, but it comes up clean. It’s time to

consider a new hypothesis. Since only one

person prepared the hot dogs, and he didn’t

touch the hamburgers, you shift your

suspicions to him. To test your new theory,

you spy on him. Sure enough, you see him

cough without covering his mouth. The

man confesses that he just got over the flu.

Case solved.