An experiment is normally intended to test a hypothesis. Is there a noun or phrase to describe an experiment with no hypothesis — i.e. doing something just to 'see what happens'?
(A convincing neologism would be acceptable: e.g. exploriment)
EDIT:
It's been pointed out that one can think of some generalised hypothesis ('something interesting will happen') for any experiment. So to refine the question a bit: what's an experiment without a specific hypothesis?
EDIT2:
Thanks for the helpful suggestions so far, which have clarified things, although sadly none have nailed it for me yet: perhaps English doesn't have a word with the connotation I'm looking for.
However I'm surprised that some of the answers have implied that there's something trivial, invalid or unscientific about experimenting without a testable hypothesis: i.e. it's "just playing about" or "just demonstration". This made me think about three types of experiment:
(A) I do something (heat water) to test a specific hypothesis (does water boil at 100°C?);
(B) I do it to measure a property (what temperature does water boil at?);
(C) I do it to observe what occurs (let's see what happens if I heat this water...).
These all seem to me to be very valid and scientific, but English doesn't seem to specifically distinguish between them. This post has turned out to be a very interesting experiment!
Best Answer
This should be a comment, but it will run long. Here's what you note
Let me try to explain why there is a problem with a scientific experiment that has no hypothesis.
Assume you are going to do action A to 'see what happens' as a scientific experiment.
There are two possible outcomes:
a) nothing happens
b) X and Y occurred after A
Both outcomes are described incompletely (not scientifically).
In case of a), let us assume that we want to repeat the experiment. To do that, and to arrive at the same result one must know what was observed. However, once you define what you are observing (and how) you have effectively defined a hypothesis.
Similarly, in the case of b), if you do not specify if you were observing for event Z (obviously you were observing if X and Y would occur), the experiment can not be repeated (might yield different results), so the results can not be taken as scientific.
For the results of the experiment to be scientific I think you need repeatability, which must include the definition of the hypothesis and the testing method.
If none is given it is definitively not clear how were you testing (i.e. testing for anything will be different for different people). Therefore I support the opinion that you are not talking about an experiment.
However, as long as you can describe what you were doing (and it was controlled), you can extract the hypothesis that you were effectively testing and turn the experiment into formal one.
If your test was not controlled then it was an accident, as per original Bacon's definition.
EDIT:
You might want to read upon this article, too (do check the references though). Maybe research is better suited in this case.