Name
Class
TITLE OF PROJECT:
HYPOTHESIS
A hypothesis is normally defined as an “educated guess”. This brings up two good questions:
1. A guess about what?
2. What makes it educated?
It is important that you begin to see that a hypothesis is really the framework around which
you build your experiment. It is better defined as “a testable statement”.
The “guess” is what you think the answer to your question may be. It becomes “educated”
when you do your background research and find out what is already known about your
topic/question. Most of the time your question has already been answered and your
experiment is being done as confirmation that these results will apply under the specifics of
your experiment.
To form a good hypothesis:
1. Restate question. Give some details as to why you want to answer this question.
2. Write the actual Hypothesis statement in an If/Then format with your independent
variable tied to the “IF” part of the statement and the dependent variable tied to the “THEN”
part of your statement. (Check you notebook for a review of independent and dependent
variables – Come Fly With US should help.)
3. Use your background research: explain WHY you think this will be the result of your
experiment. Refer to your background sources – BE CAREFUL NOT TO PLAGORIZE!
1. QUESTION:
2. HYPOTHESIS: IF
_____________________THEN
___________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
3. WHY I THINK THIS: