Dr. Richburg's botany class gathers specimens outside of the classroom for further study. Dr. Richburg instructs his students to develop a scientific theory that helps explain the biodiversity of the plants. The resulting theory should
Select one:
a. provide an educated guess about the biodiversity of the plants.
b. explain observations about the plants and predict new findings about plant biodiversity.
c. explain a few findings about the biodiversity of the plants.
d. interpret what has already been discovered about the biodiversity of the plants.

The US National Academy of Sciences defines a theory as “a plausible or scientifically acceptable, well-founded explanation that explains some aspect of the natural world. An organized system of accepted knowledge that applies to a variety of circumstances to explain a specific set of phenomena and to predict the characteristics of phenomena not yet observed. ” According to this conceptualization, we can state that the theory resulting from Dr. Richburg's botanical class must explain observations about plants and predict new discoveries about plant biodiversity.

A theory usually begins from the observation of nature. A phenomenon is observed, and from this observation a scientist or team of scientists comes to a theory, a model for explaining the phenomenon. Along with the theory also arise hypotheses which, if proven false, may invalidate the theory in part or in full.