A student sees several ants walking up a wall following the exact same trail that an ant took earlier. She wants to apply the scientific method to determine how the ants detected the trail. Which of these steps would come first in her application of the scientific method?

After observing the ants following the same path, the student should propose a possible explanation: that the first ant left a scent trail. This is a hypothesis, which comes before making a prediction or testing the idea with an experiment. The correct choice is “Hypothesize that the ants are following a scent trail that the first ant left.”

AI-written and checked against the verified answer.