Q1.
How do we check predictions? Varsha told her friend Meghna, “It will rain this afternoon because the clouds look dark”. Think of some questions Meghna could ask Varsha to make this prediction scientifically testable.
Answer
Meghna should ask for measurable evidence and past patterns — questions whose answers are numbers, not opinions.
- “What was the condition of the sky the last time it actually rained?”
- “What is the humidity today? Was it above 80 per cent the last time it rained?”
- “What is today's wind speed and direction?”
- “Is the temperature dropping the way it did before the recent rains?”
- “How many times in the last month did dark clouds appear and rain follow within three hours?”
She should also ask Varsha to sharpen the claim itself, so that it can be scored afterwards:
vague: “It will rain this afternoon.”
testable: “Measurable rain will fall here between 2 p.m. and 6 p.m. today.”
testable: “Measurable rain will fall here between 2 p.m. and 6 p.m. today.”
Why it works: questions with a plain yes/no answer (“Do the clouds look dark?”) are not very useful, because the answer is already contained in what Varsha said and cannot separate a good prediction from a lucky one. Dark clouds are a genuine sign — they mean thick, water-laden cloud — but they are not sufficient by themselves; dark clouds often drift past without raining. A testable prediction needs a quantity (humidity, temperature trend, wind), a place and time window, and a past record to compare against. Only then can Meghna say afterwards, honestly, whether the prediction succeeded or failed.
Tip: the same three ingredients — a measurable quantity, a stated time window, and a record to check against — turn any everyday claim (“this bus is always late”, “this soap lasts longer”) into something you can actually test.