Testing a Theory

Testing a Theory

Marvin Bendel

Psy201

December, Sunday 2, 2012

Merri Drake

Testing a theory

Usually when I have to conduct research it more often than not has something to do with a car. The time that I remember most, was a time a couple years ago when a friend and I had gone out to pick up our girlfriends for a double date, we got to my girlfriend at the times house and that is where it all went downhill, as soon as we pulled in to the drive way and the engine started smoking. I got out of the car and looked under the hood, at the time I didn’t have the greatest knowledge of cars so when looking in the car all I could see was that it was leaking a green fluid (coolant) and was pouring smoke out from everywhere. I shuffled around under the hood and was racking my brain for the little knowledge that I had to try and figure out why the smoke was coming out and why the car wouldn’t turn back on. So I got on the internet and started looking up reasons that smoke and coolant would be running everywhere and I was informed that there are several hoses in the engine compartment that ran to the radiator and if anyone of them had broken the engine couldn’t get coolant and would overheat and shut down. We checked all of the hoses that we could find but couldn’t find any breaks in the hoses. I had a thought that maybe since the hoses were made out of such touch material and are pressurized maybe the whole hose breaking wasn’t the problem, maybe there was a crack in the hose we couldn’t see? So I found the hose that had the most coolant on it and bent it at about a 45 degree angle and saw the hose spread open and allow coolant to flow out of it on to the ground, we then got a ride to an auto store bought a hose, put it on and the problem was solved. I would say my informal research method was just to gather as much information that I could on what could cause the coolant to leak out everywhere, I also compared the knowledge that I had about the problem to the...