← 🔬 Science skills · usually met in Std 6-12
Observe, explain, predict, test, and be willing to be wrong. The last part is the part that does the work.
A hypothesis is a proposed explanation that makes a prediction which could turn out false. An experiment tests it, changing one variable while controlling the others, with a control group for comparison. A result that contradicts the hypothesis is not a failed experiment — it is the method working. A theory in science is not a guess; it is an explanation that has survived repeated attempts to break it and ties many observations together.
What makes it reliable is not the brilliance of individual scientists but the structure around them: publishing methods so others can repeat the work, peer review, and the expectation that a claim nobody can reproduce will eventually be dropped. That is also why a single dramatic study should be treated carefully, and why 'scientists say' is not an argument — what matters is what they showed and whether anyone else could show it too.
Want to see it moving? Search YouTube for “The scientific method” ↗ — we send you to the search rather than to one video, because a link to one video eventually rots.
This entry was written for Star Student in our own words — it is a summary, not a source. Here is where the people who actually hold these facts keep them. Go and check.
Your own textbook ↗Balbharati publishes the textbooks free to read online. Your chapter is the thing to check first — an encyclopedia is a summary, and the syllabus is the syllabus.Last gone through: 1 October 2026 · How these entries are written
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