In the cups with the scientific process

Did you know …

The number of times you can poop into a cup before they send you to jail? Only once, if a policeman is watching you! Once tops, because you might not even be able to finish, especially if the cup belongs to the policeman!

Am I guessing? No! Here’s an important thing about science: we can gain information about the world through science by observing phenomena, making our best guess as to what causes that phenomena, and repeating what we observed to see if the same thing happens again. What’s “true” is difficult or impossible to pin down, but we can obtain a detailed, functional understanding of the world around us this way. If new evidence presents itself at some point, we can re-evaluate our understanding, and try to form a better guess about what causes the thing that happens to happen. If you follow.

So if we’re trying to connect dots between pooping in cups and being pulled into  squad car with your pants around your ankles (and ultimately ending up in jail), if we really want to say “This thing leads to that thing,” then we need to design an experiment that will allow us to see whether our original observation can be replicated. In this case, it can! After repeating the experiment a reasonable number of times (or what a judge would completely ironically call “an unreasonable number of times”), we can say with confidence that, for the time being, under these circumstances, pooping in a cup only once can lead to you seeing the inside of a jail cell.

Science is an amazing tool!