The observation and inferences you make should lead you to ask questions. We ask lots of questions every day, but most of them are not scientific. Typically, a good scientific research question requires setting up an investigation or even a group of investigations.
The question Charles Darwin might have asked after seeing so many different finches was something like this: What caused such diversity of finches on the Galapagos Islands?
Scientific research questions ask how or why something happens. Scientific research questions are also sometimes referred to as the problem of the experiment. You might also be asked to identify the purpose of the experiment. The purpose of the experiment is the same as the scientific research question, but it is in the form of a statement instead of a question.
Here are some scientific questions you might answer this year during science class by performing investigations.
All types of investigations (descriptive, comparative, and experimental) have a scientific research question or purpose.
Look at the three pictures you have observed in this lesson. What scientific research question could be asked?
Click on each picture to see a sample research question.