The chances overwhelmingly are that there are factors affecting the rocket’s trajectory that the experiment (and by extension, the hypothesis) has failed to take into account.
Unless it’s that you have a very specific definition in mind for “well-controlled burns” (ie. burn engine P for X seconds:milliseconds, then burn Q and R for Y seconds:milliseconds, and your position will be Z) and the mechanism controlling the rockets has failed to time them properly, or if your rocket is shot down by an orbital defence laser (or otherwise sabotaged).
That may have been what you meant anyway? To be fair, I would expect that kind of misdirection in a high school experiment. But it parsed to me as implying “if an experiment doesn’t do what you predicted, reality is wrong”.
Unless it’s that you have a very specific definition in mind for “well-controlled burns” (ie. burn engine P for X seconds:milliseconds, then burn Q and R for Y seconds:milliseconds, and your position will be Z) and the mechanism controlling the rockets has failed to time them properly, or if your rocket is shot down by an orbital defence laser (or otherwise sabotaged).
This is of course what I have in mind.
That may have been what you meant anyway? To be fair, I would expect that kind of misdirection in a high school experiment. But it parsed to me as implying “if an experiment doesn’t do what you predicted, reality is wrong”.
If you take a die that you measure to be perfectly symmetrical and have chance of 1⁄6 to land on each side (after, say, >10 bounces), and you check your reasoning about the die by throwing it, and measuring probability of it landing on each side, you’d need quite a lot of throws until the strength of evidence from deviations can overwhelm the strength of the reasoning. That is to say, your prior for probability being very close to 1⁄6 is high and for any other value, very low. The experiments are not always deterministic; deterministic experiments, if anything, are an exception.
The chances overwhelmingly are that there are factors affecting the rocket’s trajectory that the experiment (and by extension, the hypothesis) has failed to take into account.
Unless it’s that you have a very specific definition in mind for “well-controlled burns” (ie. burn engine P for X seconds:milliseconds, then burn Q and R for Y seconds:milliseconds, and your position will be Z) and the mechanism controlling the rockets has failed to time them properly, or if your rocket is shot down by an orbital defence laser (or otherwise sabotaged).
That may have been what you meant anyway? To be fair, I would expect that kind of misdirection in a high school experiment. But it parsed to me as implying “if an experiment doesn’t do what you predicted, reality is wrong”.
This is of course what I have in mind.
If you take a die that you measure to be perfectly symmetrical and have chance of 1⁄6 to land on each side (after, say, >10 bounces), and you check your reasoning about the die by throwing it, and measuring probability of it landing on each side, you’d need quite a lot of throws until the strength of evidence from deviations can overwhelm the strength of the reasoning. That is to say, your prior for probability being very close to 1⁄6 is high and for any other value, very low. The experiments are not always deterministic; deterministic experiments, if anything, are an exception.