What does a scientific law look like? 

In science lessons, laws often look like a bunch of letters in a formula or a straight line graph. 

But where have these amazing rules come from? And why does nature have to obey them?

Where the laws came from

Scientists discover scientific laws. They begin by coming up with an idea, they then do an experiment, make changes and redo the experiment, taking measurements as they go. Then they plot a graph of the measurements and hope for the best. The idea is that if a few points follow a pattern, maybe they all do. It it looks good, the scientists keep experimenting until they've got many measurements as it takes to convince them it's a law.

Useful laws

Once the scientists have identified a law, inventors can use it to inside their  inventions to ensure they behave as they want them to behave.

Take the spring! What a useful little device it is. Springs obey Hooke's law which says that the amount a spring stretches is proportional to the force that is stretching it.

But is it always true?

But how universally true is a law - does it work in every case and all of the time? Well for starters it only works until the spring snaps! And secondly, you need a good spring to see it working well. But mostly, that's fine, because we are surrounded by "good" springs. That's because inventors take great care to ensure that the springs we use in everyday gadgets will behave predictably.

Science teachers also pick out the best springs for you to do your experiments with, so that you'll see Hooke's law at work.

Springs for experiments are uniformly thick, uniform material, and nicely springy. you don't find such perfection in the natural world!

The Earth as a cube

Most of the time, we live in a custom-designed environment in which the laws hold true. But who's to say what happens outside our neat and tidy world?