ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

Hypothetico-deductive model

Okay kiddo, have you ever played a guessing game where you have to figure out what's inside a box without looking? The hypothetico-deductive model is kind of like that game, but for scientists.

Scientists use the hypothetico-deductive model to figure out how things work. Here's how it works:

Step 1: Observation - Just like you use your eyes to see what's inside the box, scientists use their senses and instruments to observe things in the world around them.

Step 2: Question - Based on their observations, scientists ask a question about what they're seeing. For example, if they observe that plants grow towards the sun, they might ask the question, "Why do plants grow towards the sun?"

Step 3: Hypothesis - A hypothesis is an idea that scientists come up with to explain their observations and answer their question. Using the example of plants growing towards the sun, a hypothesis might be, "Plants grow towards the sun because they need sunlight to make food."

Step 4: Prediction - A prediction is a guess about what will happen if the hypothesis is true. In the case of the plant example, a prediction might be, "If plants need sunlight to make food, then plants that get more sunlight will grow bigger than plants that don't get as much sunlight."

Step 5: Testing - Scientists perform experiments or tests to see if their prediction is correct. For the plant example, they might grow two sets of plants - one set that gets a lot of sunlight, and one set that gets very little sunlight. Then they would measure and compare how big the plants grew.

Step 6: Conclusion - Based on the results of their tests, scientists draw a conclusion about whether or not their hypothesis was correct. If the prediction was true and the plants that got more sunlight grew bigger, then the hypothesis that plants need sunlight to grow was likely correct.

So, in the hypothetico-deductive model, scientists use observations, questions, hypotheses, predictions, testing, and conclusions to figure out how things in the world work. Just like how you use your guessing game to figure out what's inside the box!