Science Experiments

Question: What would be the hypothesis to my scince fair project?

I am doing a project on the decline of native oysters in the chesapeke bay for my science expo. I know for a science project you need a hypothesis but my project isnt an experiment its sort of a research project. The data i have is from the number of oysters form the 1900,s till now and my project is based on the debate of weather or no to introduce a non-native species into the chesapeake bay. I have now idea what my hypothesis should be or if i should have one at all . What should i do?

Answer: There is no harm in forming a hypothesis. One thing that will help demonstrate your understanding of the Scientific Method is that you may conclude that you cannot prove or disprove your hypothesis. There is never a guarantee in any scientific research that the hypothesis will be fully tested, and when you are dealing with a complex problem this is likely. The idea is that when you finish you may actually have a different hypothesis. A common and time-tested conclusion is that more work is needed, and to propose some new ways to test the hypothesis.

One good way to approach a project like you are planning is to form multiple working hypotheses. The next step is to decide how you can test these different hypotheses.

I can form some hypothesis just with the description you have given. You should try to refine these, as you certainly have more information than I do.

1. Native oyster populations in the Chesapeake Bay are declining.
2. Native oyster populations in the Chesapeake Bay are not declining.

If you want to examine why, then you can try to test many factors and develop some hypotheses about this.

1. Native oyster populations are declining because of water pollution.
2. Native oyster populations are declining because of habitat loss.
3. Native oyster populations are declining because of eustatic changes in sea level related to isostatic rebound (rising or sinking land).

http://www.ngs.noaa.gov/GRD/GPS/Projects/CB/SEALEVEL/sealevel.html

and

http://academic.emporia.edu/aberjame/ice/lec09/lec9.htm

An important part of testing your hypotheses should be evaluation of your data. When dealing with long periods of time, it is important to learn how the data collection may have changed over time. For example how did methods for calculating oyster populations change from 1900 to now?

If you are more interested in answering the problem of the introduction of non-native oyster species, you may want to concentrate on a different set of hypotheses than the ones I have proposed.

Good luck. By the way, it is true your instructor should guide you on what is expected, but if you are capable of forming and testing a hypothesis, or several, it would never detract from your project.

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