What Is Science?

Before Video

• Answers could include: looking at nature, building things, knowing about the world and how it works, discovering things under microscopes, going outside and collecting plants and animals, and others.

• Answers could include: doing tests and experiments, observing things in nature, trying out stuff to see how it works, and measuring things.

• Answers may include: electricity in the lights, computers, any live animals and plants in the room, the weather outside the window, etc.

• Einstein may be the first person that students name, and some may know that he was a physicist. Other famous people may be Galileo (astronomy), Steven Hawking (physics, astronomy), Jane Goodall (wildlife biology), Marie Curie (physicist and chemist), Rachel Carson (ecologist, biologist) and so many others.
  

• This list would be very long if all were named, but it can be noted that science is divided into broad categories. Those are: physical science (consisting of many fields in physics and chemistry); different areas of earth science and astronomy; life science (consisting of biology, ecology, microbiology, zoology, botany and many others); social science (such as geography, anthropology); and applied science (healthcare, engineering, computer science, genetics), and so on. There are also many interdisciplinary fields such as: biomedical engineering, computational linguistics, and environmental science, to name a few.

• Common science experiences include doing an investigation, mixing chemicals in the kitchen such as baking soda and vinegar, taking apart electronics, figuring out how something works, caring for animals and plants.

After Video

• Science is the process of learning about the natural world through observation and experimentation. Scientists use evidence, along with active thinking, to explain what is happening in the natural world.

• Science starts when a person is curious about the world around them and asks questions about how it works. They think of ways to learn about the world by doing investigations, keep track of their data as evidence, and tell other people what they have found. There are eight “science and engineering practices” which is what we do when we are “doing science.”

• In the video, Izzy mentions electricity, modern agriculture and advances in medicine such as antibiotics. There are countless more! Diseases that were once harmful or deadly (polio, small pox, chicken pox) are now nearly extinct thanks to science!

• It means to study the natural world around us using observation and experimentation. Scientists use the scientific practices which are: Asking questions, Developing and using models, Planning and carrying out investigations, Analyzing and interpreting data, Using mathematics and computational thinking, Constructing explanations, Engaging in argument from evidence, and Obtaining, evaluating, and communicating information. Not all of these are used in every study and they don’t always happen in the same order.

• Something is science if there is evidence that supports the claims that people make, and if the evidence is collected using recognized scientific methods such as the eight “science and engineering practices.” If claims do not have evidence to support them, it is not science.

• Yes. Scientific answers change when new evidence is discovered that disproves what we thought was fact. For example, people believed that the earth was flat, but as scientific equipment improved, more accurate observations were made, and it became evident that the earth is spherical, or shaped like a ball.

• If an observation cannot be repeated then more evidence must be collected by trying to repeat past observations in different ways or by trying new methods to collect the data. For a scientific idea to be valid, other scientists should be able to repeat your work and reach the same conclusion.