Question

The Grey Cat.

Each day you take a walk at a different time following the same route. Along your path there is a bus stop with a bench located at the bottom of a hill. Upon this bench sits a grey cat. Each day, as you pass this grey cat, you say “hello cat”. You’ve recognized that each day, as you do this, a bus consistently comes over the hill. The consistency of this events sparks your interest, it seems to go beyond the possibility of coincidence. In order to satiate your curiousity you have decided to design an experiment to investigate the anomoly.



Working with just the information provided, create a GOOD Hypothesis about the above scenario. Generate an experiment to test your hypothesis, and write an experimental design. Your experimental design writeup must clearly define all essential aspects of the experiment.
Note: Avoid suppositions at all cost! Work with only the information provided. This is science.

Answer 1

Hypothesis: There is a synchrony between the time the bus passes over the hill, the time the cat is positioned on the bench and the time I talk to the cat.

An experiment will be established to prove or deny this hypothesis. This experiment will try to answer if there is a synchrony between the bus, the cat and me.

First, I will write down the time I usually leave the house for the bus stop and then I will look for a schedule of the buses in my city, to evaluate the times when each one passes above the hill to which I refer.

It is necessary that I clock the time spent between my home and the bus stop to which I am going, so that I can relate to the bus schedule.

I must also install a camera system at the bus stop to observe the times the cat arrives at that location.

Every day, for a month, I will write down the time I left home, the time I arrived at the bus stop, the time the cat arrived at the bus stop and the time the bus passed. At the end of this period, I will do average calculations to find out how many times our schedules have been synchronized. Through these data I will conclude whether the hypothesis is false or true.