Zoey’s experiments in the book follow the scientific method, an approach to knowledge production with roots stretching back to the ancient world, though its modern rules were first codified in the Scientific Revolution of the 16th and 17th centuries. English philosopher Francis Bacon (1561-1626) is often credited as the founder of the modern scientific method, which is sometimes called the Baconian method in his honor, though similar methods were used by Iraqi scholar Ibn al-Haytham and others in the 11th-century Islamic Golden Age.

Used across various disciplines from biology to physics, the scientific method is a process of steps that facilitate experimentation. Its steps typically are: 

1. Determine a research question/problem;
2. Conduct background research to learn about the subject;
3. Make predictions (hypotheses) about what will happen; 
4. Gather data by conducting an experiment or observing a phenomenon;
5. Analyze the results of the experiment; and 
6. Form conclusions. 

If results are unclear, scientists usually revise the experimental procedure and repeat the steps again. After obtaining useful results, the scientific method includes sharing results with others, allowing them to replicate the experiment and confirm its findings, and creating new questions for follow-up experiments (“The Scientific Process.” American Museum of Natural History). Importantly, the process is dynamic: Steps change depending on the questions being investigated and the progress of the experiment. 

The novel also introduces basic experiment design, or how to effectively investigate a hypothesis. Experiments typically involve changing one aspect of a repeated plan that keeps all other elements of the environment stable. That way, scientists can be sure that the changing aspect, or variable, is responsible for the experiment’s results. There are three types of variables: Independent variables are those that researchers change, dependent variables are those that scientists observe or measure, and controlled variables are the environmental elements that need to remain constant while the independent variable changes. Zoey’s mom refers to this idea when she emphasizes the importance of changing only one thing each time in an experiment, while keeping everything else the same.