The Meaning of a "Failed" Experiment
What is a "failed" experiment?
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Most likely, a "failed" experiment would end up with results that do not align with your hypothesis.
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Sometimes, it is just too hard to actually test your hypothesis using the given resources, and you end up not being able to proceed with your experiment.
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A “failed” experiment is by no means the end to your scientific inquiry. It can actually help you eliminate certain possibilities (i.e., narrow down paths that do not return positive results) and can be used to enhance or modify your hypothesis for future experiments [7].
Let's look at your plant one last time.
Remember that you decided to monitor the effect of different watering frequencies on the growth of your plant. But... a month into your experiment, it seems like none of your seeds are growing into plants. You hypothesized that if you watered your seed once a day at a fixed amount, it will grow into a plant. Since your results say otherwise, your experiment has just "failed."
Gladly, you did quite a lot of prior research before conducting your experiment. The following are a few points you summarized from various reliable sources [8]:
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(For illustrational purposes, the points listed below are exaggerated based on real facts)
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Plant seeds germinate within 2 weeks
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Plant seeds vary in their degree of temperature sensitivity
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Most plants require sunlight throughout all growth stages
Based on the information you have, what do you think is/are suitable modification(s) to your current experiment that can potentially give you positive results?
A. Wait longer for your seeds to grow
B. Grow your seeds at different temperatures as well
C. Place your plant pots under the sun for an hour on sunny days
A famous "failed" experiment:
The Michelson-Morley Experiment
The Michelson-Morley experiment is a famous “failed” experiment where the two scientists, Michelson and Morley, obtained results that initially contradicted their hypothesis but later paved the way for the emergence of a new paradigm in the physics world [9].
They created an experiment to support a classical physics claim where an object’s (light) relative velocity changes with the current of the medium (ether) [9].
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In other words, imagine watching a person swim 1 m/s along or against a current that also moves at 1 m/s.
...but when they swim against the current, they would stay still in the same position forever.
When they swim along the current, the person would appear to be moving even faster at 2 m/s...
However, their experiments showed that no matter how they changed the current of ether, light always moved at a constant velocity [9]. The results did not support their hypothesis, but it turned out that they provided the basis for Einstein’s famous theories on special relativity, which explained the special behaviour of light that classical physics fails to model [9].
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