Computational Science

What is experimental science?

The second way to do science is experimental science. When most people think about doing science, they are thinking about experimental science. When you do an experiment, you are doing experimental science.

The basic idea of experimental science is this: first, you observe some behavior. For example, you observe that when you exercise, your heartbeat gets faster. We might want to do an experiment to answer this question: does the amount of exercise cause your heart to beat faster? You probably already know the answer to this question (the answer is YES!), but scientists like to measure how exercise changes your heart beat.

One experiment that we can do is called a stress test. The idea of a stress test is to control how much exercise you get, and measuring your heart rate at the same time. For example, a person is placed on a treadmill. The scientist starts the treadmill very slowly, at walking speed. The scientist records the heart rate, such as 60 beats per minute. Then, the scientist speeds up the treadmill, until the person is running. Every time the treadmill is changed to go faster, the scientist records the heart rate.

The chart below shows the results from a stress test. This chart shows that as the speed increases (gets faster), the heartbeat also gets faster (increases). We changed the treadmill speed to measure if the heart rate also changed. It did!

Scientists use special words in experimental science. Here are some of them:

Experimental scientists go to school to learn how to do experiments well. There are different types of experimental science, and generally a scientist will become skilled in only one (or perhaps a few) type of experimental technique. When you do a science lab in school, your teacher is trying to teach you how to do experimental science. Perhaps you are learning how to use a particular experimental tool, or you are learning how to collect experimental data. Learning how to design and run scientific experiments requires hard work, many hours of practice, and a good teacher!

2. observational
1. introduction

4. theoretical