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Hi Ms. Barnes. Hi. Hi, I'm Bianca and this is Jacob and Matthew. Dr. D told us we needed

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to learn more about the scientific method. It might help us solve the problem of stink

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invading the town of Fuseville. We were hoping you could help us. Wow, look at this place.

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Hey, this doesn't look like a lab. This looks like a plane. Are you a scientist? Well, not

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exactly. Let me ask you something. Have you ever heard of an engineer? An engineer? Isn't

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that someone that drives a train, designs or invents something? That's correct on our

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account. I'm an electronics engineer and we use math, science and principles of electronics

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in order to help us with our flying laboratory. A flying laboratory? What do you mean by that?

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Come on kids, let me show you how it works. Our plane is more like a computer lab with

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lots of electronic equipment and aircraft systems. And here we even have a real cockpit

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just like normal planes. I'd like to be a pilot one day. And I'm sure you will, but

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maybe you'll fly this plane. Cool. We have several experimental stations in our plane

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which are all tied together in a network. They work together to help us to collect data

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while we're flying and landing. The type of data we collect depends on the type of research

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we're conducting. Get it? Yes, but how do you use the scientific method on your job?

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Well, the first thing we do using the scientific method is to identify a problem, right? Right.

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Well, the second thing we do in using the scientific method is to collect data related

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to the problem by changing certain variables. What are variables? Well, variables are just

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changes. We change one or more things one at a time and then we measure the results

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of that change. How are you going to do that? During the winter season, we are going to

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take the airplane to a very cold place, like up in Michigan near the Great Lakes, and land

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it on a very long runway. Then we'll test the plane by landing it on a runway to see

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how long it takes once the brakes are applied to stop the plane. This tells us how much

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friction that we have on the tires. It's just like taking your bicycle and trying to stop

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on ice or snow instead of on a dry, smooth road. So we'll test at least four variables

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in our experiment. A dry surface, wet surface, icy surface, and a snowy surface. Let me show

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you how we can look at some of our data. We can observe all of the different camera views

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at the video station. These computer-generated graphics displays help us see how the airplane

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is traveling down the runway. Wow, cool pictures! It can handle millions of bytes of data all

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at once. This represents the data collection part of the scientific method, and the results

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come out in a pattern of numbers that the researchers can use to tell how the tires

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reacted with the runway surface. Awesome! What do we do next? Next, we take the data

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that we collected and we analyze it in order to help us solve our runway friction problem.

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We can use what we find from analyzing the data to make better runways and landing gear

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to help our planes to land more safely during bad or inclement weather. This is the way

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that we help make our airplanes and airports safer for you and me. So this is how we use

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the scientific method on our Boeing 757 research laboratory out here at the NASA Langley Research

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Center. Now that we've shown you how to first identify a problem, next to collect the data

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by changing certain variables, maybe you can use this method in order to solve your problem

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with the stink. Yes, I think we should think about our variables for the investigation

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of stink. The stink! And variables!