Understanding Fundamentals Of Science
What comes to your mind when you hear the word 'science'? White lab coat, test tube and microscope? Telescopes and stars? Einstein? An astronomer looking at the sky from a telescope? Too many textbooks? While these represent different aspects of science, none of them is truly a symbol of 'science', as it is so multidimensional as a field.
Science studies the physical and natural world through observations and experiments. Science is all around us. Right now, the fact that you exist and are in the process of reading this text, which is about science. The process of creating the air with which we breathe is also science. The food we enjoy, the water we drink, and the clothes we wear are all based on science. Looking up into the atmosphere gives us a glimpse of astronomy, which is another branch of science. You are not science around this, it is not possible. Science is everywhere and one of the most important subjects of study in our world.
Taken from the Latin scientia, meaning "knowledge" is a systematic enterprise that constructs and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about nature and the universe. In the old and closely related sense, "science" also refers to a body of knowledge, the type that can be rationally explained and applied reliably. A practitioner of science is known as a scientist.
In short science involves observing the world through seeing, hearing, observing, and recording. Science is a curiosity in thoughtful action about the world and how it behaves.
Science is…
Observing the world.
See and hear
Observation and recording.
Anyone can get an idea of how nature works. Some people think their idea is correct because "it feels right" or "it makes sense." But for a scientist (which you may be!), This is not enough. A scientist will test the idea in the real world. An idea that predicts how the world works is called a hypothesis.
If an idea, or hypothesis, correctly predicts how something will behave, we call it a theory. If an idea interprets all the facts, or evidence, that we have found, we also call it a theory.
"Scientific method" usually means a series of steps that scientists follow to find out how nature works.
These steps would be good for the school science fair project. But usually science is not really so!
From Observation to Theory
Sometimes observations come before thought or theory.
For thousands of years, people have seen some "stars" roaming the night sky in a looping pattern. Finally, in 1514 Nicholas Copernicus came up with the idea of "Heliostrism" (meaning the Sun was centered). He thought that the Sun is the center of the universe, the Earth being one of the many regions orbiting the Sun. That idea explained the way the planets rotated. It also predicted where they would "roam" next. This idea became a theory. Of course, we later reformed that theory. After all, the Sun is not the center of the entire universe, but our own solar system.
Sometimes science is mostly inside the mind of a scientist.
Albert Einstein and his theories were like this. It took a long time for scientists to be able to test them and show that they were right.
Science is not just a good package of knowledge.
Science is not merely a step-by-step approach to discovery.
Science is like a mystery that invites anyone to spy and join in the fun.
What is the purpose of Science?
Perhaps the most common description is that the purpose of science is to produce a useful model of reality.
Most scientific investigations use some form of scientific method.
The science described above is sometimes called pure science to distinguish it from applied science, which is the application of research to human needs.
Discovery: The Spark for Science
"Eureka!" Or "Aha!" Moments may not occur often, but they often give experiences that inspire science and scientists. For a scientist, there is the possibility of discovery every day - to come up with a new idea or to see something that no one has ever done before.
Huge bodies of knowledge have not yet been created and the most basic questions about the universe remain to be answered:
What causes gravity?
How do tectonic plates rotate on the surface of the Earth?
How do our brains store memories?
How do water molecules intermingle?
We do not know the full answers to them and the plethora of other questions, but the possibility of answering them further advances science.
Discoveries, new questions, and new ideas are the ones that keep scientists moving and even at night, but they are only part of the picture; The rest involves very difficult (and sometimes tedious) work.
In science, discoveries and ideas must be verified by multiple lines of evidence and then integrated into the rest of science, a process that can take many years. And often, searches are not bolted out of the blue.
The process of scientific discovery is not limited to professional scientists working in laboratories. From everyday experience it can be inferred that your car is not starting due to a bad fuel pump. These activities include making all observations and analyzing evidence - and all of them provide the satisfaction of finding an answer that makes sense of all the facts.
In fact, some psychologists argue that scientists also learn in the same way that individual humans learn (especially as children) and they have a lot in common for the progress of science: observing both, considering evidence , Testing ideas and capturing those tasks.
Think science!
You may think that scientific thinking is different from the type of reasoning tools you use in your everyday life - that scientists walk around with heads full of the equations through which they see the world. In fact, many aspects of scientific thinking are extensions of what you probably think everyday:
Ever tried to find out how amazing this happened? Perhaps you have seen a magician make his assistant disappear from a box and wonder if this trick involves a trap door….
Ever ask for more evidence (eg, looking for a joint in the floor under the box)?
These may seem like trivial examples, but in reality, they represent scientific habits of mind applicable to everyday situations. Scientists use such methods of thinking to examine their subjects of study - be it human behavior or neutron stars - and you can use those same tools in your life.
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