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When the circumstance you wish to investigate is outside the range of data available to you, but you can see that there is a definite trend with respect to some variable (eg, date,time, size, weight, distance etc) you can make a good estimate from the rates of change what the situation will be at a new date, time, size etc etc).

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Why dont you weigh a solution dispensed at the beginning of an experiment?

Technically, as long as you record the volume of the solution and are sure of the concentration, you could extrapolate the weight.


Scientists extrapolate backwards in time to derive?

the big bang theory


How would a scientist use a landsat satellite image to determine the amount of pollution being produced by a city?

There is no direct way to measure pollution produced by a city with Landsat data, but you could calculate the extent (area) of the city and then potentially extrapolate pollution based pollution-per-area averages. For more on Landsat & urban growth, see the related link below.


Why is it important to be able to reproduce results?

Let's say a drug company claims that "90 out of 100 people" respond well to a certain medication and "only 1 person out of 100 people reported a minor side effect. Statistics are used to extrapolate to the larger population. So this drug company claims that 90% of the world's population would benefit from this drug. But when the company releases the drug to the market, 50% of the people who received a prescription reported severe side effects. Obviously, the original statistic was wrong. The drug was only tested on 100 people; this small size cannot represent and extrapolate to a much larger population.So let's say you tested whether 5 potato slices with skins would sprout "eyes" and whether the sprouts could be planted in the ground to grow more potatoes. You conclude that 4 out of 5 potatoes do sprout-- and 3 successfully produced potatoes after being planted. If I can reproduce the steps you used, it would give reliability and credibility to your study or experiment. However, if you didn't say you put the potato slices with skins in water plus sugar and placed the potatoes in direct sunlight for 3 hours each day for 10 days (e.g. state exactly what you did and the conditions you set up), another person might set up the experiment in a different way and get totally different results. For example: I put my potatoes with skins in 1-inch of buttermilk and under a lamp but only on 4 days-- so, none of my potatoes grew sprouts... I conclude your experiment wasn't helpful or was even invalid because I didn't get the same results. But---if I repeat your steps exactly, I should get the same results, which lends credibility to your experiment.If a study is well-documented, but still produces different results, that helps define both the study's steps and outcomes. The next person can change the variables to make a different study.


Besides fossils what other evidence is there for evolution?

What are other types of evidence for evolutionary theory, other than fossils? Darwin's observations on the voyage of the Beagle, and succeeding scientist's observations that conform to his hypotheses. Domestication of plants and animals by purposeful and accidental selection over the past ten thousand years. Real-time observation of changes in bacteria, viruses and simple animals. A hundred years of fruit-fly experiments. DNA analysis and genetic decoding. The appearance of new stains of drug-resistant microbes comes quickly to mind. The breeding of animals for hunting and agricultural purposes, and for sporting purposes and pets, has been practiced for 1000s of years and is essentially human-directed evolution, and in many cases is historically documented. The principals of getting a good goat or cow were known and practiced long before anybody thought to extrapolate them backwards to the origin of a species and call it a scientific theory.