Preliminary Review: Natural Science Basics
Science or should I go in to detail, Natural Science is one of the subjects that I am taking up as a Information Technology Student at the Ateneo de Davao University, yet my absences are all piling up once again just like they did during my high school years, but hey, let’s do something productive during this vacant time and head into a few pointers that could be made use of for me and probably a few others as their Preliminary Review in Natural Science, so, here are some basics that I know without the need to open my notes.
Science (from the Latin scientia, meaning “knowledge”) refers to any systematic knowledge-base or prescriptive practice that is capable of resulting in a prediction or predictable type of outcome.[1. WikiPedia]
From the statement that I have given above we can deduce that Science is a systematized body of knowledge. It requires to go through processes or steps that is also referred to as the Scientific Method. Even though Science can answer a lot of questions and issues rationally and provide reasonable feedback to a lot of things that have been happening around the globe, it do has its limitations which are (maybe) yet to be discovered.
Science might know a lot of things but one of the limitations it has is the origin of the humans, the start of life on earth and the creator himself who is named God our creator, from a religious point of view. Science and Religion do not always agree with each other and like emphasized in the movie Angels and Demons Science and Religion needs each other to understand the human better and our origin more detailed. They do not agree more since there has never been a scientific explanation about the existence of a God and as long as there won’t be any there will not be a single scientist who would agree that there is a God out there that has created all of us and the earth along with it.
The process/steps that I have mentioned above once again is called the scientific method wherein you have first to identify the problem, wherein that particular problem must be testable, achievable and something well-define, you need to be keen with your variables because others might interpret it as something totally different.
And just to give a random sample let’s analyze the following two issues that need to be solved.
One morning when I went to the garden and put pee on one of the flowers it started to bloom.
Do you understand the problem and can you identify the variables that are attached to it? Do you consider the question above a well define problem or not? Of course, it is not, because there are multiple strings that you can add to some of its variables like for example, the setting of the garden that morning, what kind of pee has been poured upon the flowers and what kind of flower has been peed on. A constructive problem that appears more properly defined would be
One morning when I went to the garden and put pee of my little baby son on one of the sun flowers it started to bloom.
Do you get the point now why it is very important to have the whole problem well defined before you engage into solving it? With just a single variable changed the whole experiment might have a total different outcome from what you are supposed to be come out with.
In our next Preliminary Review we’ll try to tackle Natural Science Basics once again and talk about the Variety of Organisms and their characteristics such as movement, reproduction and more.
Read MoreThe Scientific Method
I don’t know wether to include it into the Physics division for our Educational Aid sub-category, or just post it under Educational Aid itself or, create a General Science Category for this lesson that I’ll be posting.
In this post, I’ll be discussing every single step of the Scientific Method, describing each step how it works and its performed, and a bit other useful information that you must need to know about the scientific method. Actually, I think we’ve tackled this lesson in my 2nd year of Hig School Education, as well as in the 3rd and now in the 4th.. That’s why I don’t know where to put it, but anyways, let’s get it started.
Let’s first define scientific method. Scientific method refers to the body of techniques for investigating phenomena, acquiring new knowledge, or correcting and integrating previous knowledge.
And now let’s move into the detail as I’ll be discussing every step of it thoroughly so all of you can understand.
- Find/Name the problem
- In this first step, you’ll gonna look for a problem that you’ll be experimenting about or where you will apply the scientific method. Let me name a sample.
- Ex: “What would happen if I would cut all trees in the Davao Area without planting new ones?”
- Formulate your hypothesis
- While here in the second step, you’re going to create your own conclusion of what would happen to your experiment or to the problem if certain action would have been taken. Let me stick to the example that I’ve posted above. and continue with it.
- Ex: “If I would not replace the trees I cut, then Davao would be under water the next time it’ll heavily rain here.”
- Don’t you ever fear formulating your hypothesis. It’s nothing but a guess that you’ve come up with, which may or may not be correct. Predictions are not always true, are they?
- Test your hypothesis (experiment)
- Here’s where you come into action in physical means, by doing the experiment or executing the tasks mentioned in your hypothesis to test whether it’s correct or incorrect. Besides a experiment, you could also conduct a intensive study to check whether your hypothesis could be true or not.
- Ex: “I’ve now cut all the trees, and it’s starting to rain in masses any day soon..”
- Check and interpret your results
- Now is the typing to gather the data from the experiment that you have conducted or from the research that you’ve conducted. Compare and contrast these details with other facts that you can find all around the internet or other people who are doing a common experiment than you. The more details gathered, the more informative your results tally may be.
- Ex: “In Canada, the whole forest has been cut, and it rained, and everything is under water now.” (based on a research that you might have done)
- Ex: “Davao City is now under water after the experiment that I have conducted! It has rained very hard yesterday, and all the water is still around Davao.” (could be based from the observation or the data that you collect from your experiment
- Create a conclusion
- After all the data gathered, after everything observed keenly, and everything vital for your experiment or study analyzed properly. It’s time to come up with a final conclusion based on either the research, the data you collected from the experiment, or the observation from the experiment that you have conducted.
- Ex: “My hypothesis is true, Davao City will be under water when all trees are cut in the Davao Area”.
If you still have problems understanding the lesson or have got something to suggest or say, or simply wanna dropby a thanks. Just do so, by adding a comment below, comments are very welcomed here and make me, especially happy^^,)
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