The Nature of Science

Your Assignment: Draw a scientist and the environment (s)he works in. What does a scientist look like? What type of environment does your scientist work in?

What is a stereotype?

What gender is your scientist?

What ethnicity is your scientist?

What age is your scientist?

What is your scientist like? Is s(he) “crazy,” “mad,” or a “nerd?”

What type of environment does your scientist work in?

Is your scientist stereotypical?

Scientists are observant!

Scientists look at the world with logic and a sense of wonder.

They ask questions that lead up to a hypothesis.

What is a hypothesis?

It is NOT an educated guess!

It is defined as a tentative explanation.

What do scientists do after they formulate a hypothesis?

They experiment and observe to come to a conclusion about their hypothesis.

What do scientists do if their experiment does not back up their hypothesis?

They either change their hypothesis or change their experiment.

What happens after the experiment or investigation has been found to match the hypothesis?

They submit their work for peer review.

Once the work has been found to be valid by other scientists, the work is published in a paper (or lab write-up).

What would happen if scientists did not test their ideas before publishing their papers?

There would be a lot of mis-information. And that is just NOT good science!

Once the work is published and accepted, it becomes a theory.

What is a Theory?

A theory is an explanation for observations for which there is no known deviation.

What is a Law?

A law is a generalization about how the natural world behaves.

Does a theory turn into a law?

NO! Theories are separate from laws. Remember this!

And that, my friends, is the nature of science in a nutshell. But we could go on………...