Try to think back to when you were a little kid, or if you have younger cousin or sibling, think about how they are. Your little brother might ask questions all the time like, “Why is the sky blue?” A good answer for most people would be that the stuff that makes up air likes to move blue light around but not red light and so the sky is blue (rather than red). But a toddler would say, “Why?” And he would get another short answer. Then, he would say, “Yea, but why?” And on and on and on.

We watch something happen and wonder why it happens. Then, just like a little kid would go ask a grown-up, we search for answers, often including our own educated guess. Sometimes the answers come to us just by thinking; sometimes they come when we notice patterns. When the ideas make sense and are supported by what we observe, we can tell everyone we know about it. And that is a simple way of explaining science: finding a problem, making a hypothesis, going through our procedure, collecting data, getting results, and forming a conclusion.