[gqcpafbj] Three types of scientific experiments

There are three types of scientific experiments.

From grade school, you form a hypothesis, and perform an experiments to confirm or reject the hypothesis.

You repeat an experiment previously performed by someone else, seeking to replicate their results. Although this type of experiment may seem less glamorous than the first type, it is in fact the heart of science, that methods should be published, and results replicable. IMHO, this is the category that most grade schoolers should do.

A variation on this second type is just to repeat the analysis of the results.

You identify an incompleteness in a theory and seek determine what happens in such a situation that the theory is unable to predict an outcome. This experiment is done ostensibly without a hypothesis. The outcome may be used to form future hypotheses and extend the incomplete theory. Much science is performed on this frontier, despite grade school instruction of the scientific method. It sometimes has a "Let's blow shit up because we can" feel to it.