Undergraduate science research projects and students - School of ...

Undergraduate Learning in Science Project Working Paper 5that it can like… you can’t really prove anything is rightexclusively but you can prove things are wrong. 1.B.37.(Not Q2)2cExperiments contribute to a collective effort to test theoriesTwo students included this view in their responses in the final interview.Both used the analogy of a jigsaw puzzle. The scientific community wastrying to solve this puzzle and experiments provided the pieces. This appearsto be a collective, co-operative view of the role of scientific experiments.Interviewer: What can the experiment give that helps youdecide about a question?Student: In a way it does erm, it might not completelyanswer your question, it might comes in different bits, youknow from your experiment in what other people havedone it comes in you know different pieces it’s just like ajigsaw puzzle, everything comes together you know to geta clear picture of what's happening actually. 3.I.60.2dExperiments enable scientists to choose between rival/competing theoriesTwo students gave this type of response.Initially, most theories - a theory will be personal andsomebody will come up with a theory - somebody willcome up with an idea to explain something and otherpeople will go away and test that with experiments, with -put it against other theories that other people come upwith, compare them, maybe that initial one will have to bechanged to some degree, maybe some bits are wrong andsome bits are right, somebody else has come up with animproved version of it, which happens all the time -they're always being improved upon. 1.G.122.2eA lot of people have two different theories and they doexperiments to try and prove those theories and it will beonly the one who eventually gets the right experiment atthe right time and the theory’s proved. 3.D.47.(NotQ2)Experiments enable scientists to develop theoriesThese responses were usually referring to the role of experiments in thepersonal development of a scientist’s thinking. They would seem to indicatethat there is a distinction between experiments that influence local/personalthinking and those that influence the thinking of the scientific community asa whole. It may be that experiments of the former type are more preliminaryand exploratory than those experiments which influence the wider23