Scientific Enquiry

Key Stage 2

Meaning

A scientific enquiry is when you ask a question about nature and then design and perform an experiment or investigation that can answer that question.

About Scientific Enquiries

Scientific Enquiries give us a way to find out what is true and what is not.

The question you start with is very important.

Some questions cannot be tested with an experiment or an investigation, so they are not good questions. For example; what colour is better, red or blue? You cannot measure how good a colour is and everyone will have different opinions so this cannot be tested. Some questions cannot be tested with experiment, but can be investigated. For example; how many legs does an insect have? You cannot do an experiment to find this, you must investigate by going out and catching many insects and counting the number of legs on each to see if it's always the same.

The experiment or investigation must be designed well to answer the question. If your question is "how many cans will fit in a shopping bag?" You cannot answer that question if in your experiment you put other things in the bag as well, or the cans are all different sizes, that would not be a fair test.