support for the hypothesis. If the predictions are incorrect, that suggests the hypothesis is
wrong.
Make Observations
Observe something in which you are interested. Here is an example of a real observation
made by students in Minnesota (Figure26.1). Imagine that you are one of the students
who discovered this strange frog.
Figure 1.14: A frog with an extra leg. ( 21 )Imagine that you are on a field trip to look at pond life. While collecting water samples, you
notice a frog with five legs instead of four. As you start to look around, you discover that
many of the frogs have extra limbs, extra eyes or no eyes. One frog even has limbs coming
out of its mouth. You look at the water and the plants around the pond to see if there is
anything else that is obviously unusual like a source of pollution.
Identify a Question That is Based on Your Observations
The next step is to ask a question about these frogs. For example, you may ask why
so many frogs are deformed. You may wonder if there is something in their environment
causing these defects. You could ask if deformities are caused by such materials as water
pollution, pesticides, or something in the soil nearby (Figure1.15).
Yet, you do not even know if this large number of deformities is “normal” for frogs. What
if many of the frogs found in ponds and lakes all over the world have similar deformities?
Before you look for causes, you need to find out if the number and kind of deformities is
unusual. So besides finding outwhythe frogs are deformed, you should also ask: