SCIENCE IS A WAY OF UNDERSTANDING THE UNIVERSE

Science is an organized body of knowledge about nature. It is the product of observations, common sense, rational thinking, and (sometimes) brilliant insights. People usually do science with other people—it is very much a communal human endeavor. Science has been built up over thousands of years and gathered from places all around the world. It is a huge gift to us today from the thinkers and experimenters of the past. 

Yet science is more than a body of knowledge. Science is a method by which we can explore our natural environment and effectively discover its secrets. Consider, for example, a scientist who is puzzled by an observation that arises in the course of her daily work. She ponders the bizarre observation in light of what she already knows. After some struggle, which includes opening her mind to a myriad of possibilities, she makes a creative, imaginative leap and is struck by a new idea. If this new idea were true, she realizes, it would explain the bizarre observation. It would also give her insight into areas she has yet to explore. 

in a nutshell, is what science is all about—it is a process by which new ideas are created to help explain what we observe in nature, both out-of-doors and in the laboratory. The new idea with its explanatory powers is called a hypothesis. The hypothesis is a scientific hypothesis when, and only when, it can be tested. The more tests that the scientific hypothesis passes, the greater the confidence we have that the hypothesis is true. However, if the hypothesis fails even one test, then the hypothesis is taken to be false. A new, more all-encompassing idea is needed. 

The experience of doing science does not follow any prescribed path. What matters is that the scientist is engaged in activities leading to new discoveries or greater understandings. One of the first activities tends to be the asking of a broad question of interest to the scientist, such as  

This wheel illustrates the essential activities conducted by scientists. The first activity, shown in the center, is the asking of a broad question that defines the scope of research. It is usually based upon the scientists particular interests. The scientist can then move among all the various activities in unique paths and repeat activities as often as he or she finds necessary. 

Science is not just o set of facts, but a process for discovering more facts 

National Science Foundation. Office of Legislative Public Affairs 

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Science Is a Way of Understanding the Universe ever, that a single grain of sand contains on the order of 125 million trillion of them. There are roughly 250,000 times... 

Science is a way of knowing and understanding the universe and the world we live in. The Latin word for science is scire, which means "to know." Science operates by asking questions, observing, analyzing observations, and communicating observations. This type of procedure raises a never-ending supply of questions. Scientific inquiry uses theories and hypotheses to explain... 

It graces the walls of lecture halls and laboratories of all types, from universities to industry. It is one of the most powerful icons of science. It captures the essence of chemistry in one elegant pattern. The periodic table provides a concise way of understanding how all known chemical elements react with one another and enter into chemical bonding, and it helps to explain the properties of each element that make it react in such a fashion. 

After all, the twentieth century is behind us. It has become history and therefore a proper object for historians to deal with. Only recently have historians of chemistry begun to meet this challenge. They convinced university administrators, grants committees and the scientific community alike that the history of modern chemistry is not only a fascinating topic to study, but indeed a prerequisite for understanding the modern world in all its complexity. Historians are clearly no prophets, but to deal with the future of science and technology in a sensible and responsible way requires a certain amount of historical literacy. 

Much of soil science is empirical rather than theoretical in practice. This fact is a result of the extreme complexity and heterogeneity of soils, which are impossible to fully describe or quantify by simple chemical or physical models. It is not unusual for working solutions to be found for soil chemical problems with little, or even fallacious, understanding at a fundamental level. The simplicity of the empirical approach becomes the seed of its undoing, because the primary advantage of the scientific method, predictive capability, is curtailed or lost. On the other hand, the universality of chemical principles and laws (i.e., theories) permit processes to be described in such a way that soil chemical behavior can be understood and predicted in many situations not yet studied. 

Science—a way of knowing and understanding the universe and the world we live in. The Latin word for science is scire, which means "to know."... 

One chemist may hope that by undastanding certain materials he or she will be able to find a cure for a disease or a solution for an environmental ill. Another chemist may simply want to understand a phenomenon. Because chemistry deals with aU materials, it is a subject of enormous breadth. It would be difficult to exaggerate the influence of chemistry on modem science and technology or on our ideas about our planet and the universe. In the section that follows, we will take a brief glimpse at modmi chemistry and see some of the ways it has influenced technology, science, and modem thought. 

Russell J. Crawford is a Professor of Chemistry at Swinburne University ofTechnology. He obtained a Master of Science from Swinburne and a PhD from The University of Melbourne. He has held leadership positions in the university, including Dean of Science and Dean, Faculty of Life Social Sciences. His research is in surface and colloid science, with early work focusing on mineral flotation and the removal of heavy metals from aqueous environments. His recent research focuses on understanding the ways in which biological organisms interact with solid substrate surfaces, such as those used in the construction of medical implants. 

Chemistry is still one of the natural sciences, but in a special and unusual way. Chemists want to understand not only the substances and transformations that occur in the natural world, but also those others that are permitted by natural laws. Consequently, the field involves both discovery and creation. Chemists want to discover the components of the chemical universe—from atoms and molecules to organized chemical systems such as materials, devices, living cells, and whole organisms—and they also want to understand how these components interact and change as a function of time. However, chemical scientists consider not just the components of the chemical universe that already exist they also con-... 

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