Scientific Inquiry

For this week’s Discussion, you will engage in a little scientific inquiry of your own, using the following scenario:

What is in the Can?

One afternoon, you are enjoying some quiet time reading on the couch when you decide it is too quiet. What are the kids up to? You find them in the kitchen with a pile of canned goods. They have torn the labels from the cans and ripped them up into tiny pieces. Now you are confronted with cans of different shapes and sizes but you don’t know what is in any of them. Instead of getting angry you decide that you can use this as an opportunity to practice using the scientific method. Can you use your powers of observation to collect data and reasoning to figure out the most likely content of each can without a label?

That is the focus of this week’s Discussion. Your instructor will provide the mystery can and everyone in the class will ask questions, review and discuss the data, and develop their own hypothesis for what is inside. What sorts of things would be different between a can containing corn and a can containing tomato paste? Ask questions that would help you rule out certain types of products. What knowledge of canned goods do you already have, or can you learn through field work at a local store, that can help you narrow down what could be inside your instructor’s mystery can?

1. Collect data about the can.
   • You should first ask at least two questions about the can itself. Your instructor will answer all the questions you have about the can.
   • Be sure to read the questions posed by your classmates to avoid asking the same questions. This will help further expand the investigation with new questions.

   300 words and must pass a plagiarizer checker