What is science?

In school, science may sometimes seem like a collection of isolated and static facts listed in a textbook, but that’s only a small part of the story just as importantly, science is also a process of discovery that allows us to link isolated facts into coherent and comprehensive understandings of the natural world.

Science is a way of discovering what’s in the universe and how those things work today, how they worked in the past, and how they are likely to work in the future scientists are motivated by the thrill of seeing or figuring out something that no one has before

Science is useful.it can be used to develop new technologies, treat diseases, and deal with many other sorts of problems.

Science will never be “finished.”

Science is a global human endeavor, people all over the world participate in the process of science.

Science for all

The process of scientific discovery is not limited to professional scientists working in labs. You engage in scientific thinking every day and may not even realize it. The experience of deducing that your car won’t start because of a bad fuel pump, or of figuring out that the centipedes in your backyard prefer shady rocks, shares fundamental similarities with classically scientific discoveries like working out DNA’s double helix. These activities all involve making observations and analyzing evidence — and they all provide the satisfaction of finding an answer that makes sense of all the facts. In fact, some psychologists argue that the way individual humans learn (especially as children) bears a lot of similarity to the progress of science: both children and scientists make observations, consider evidence, test ideas, and hold on to the ideas that work.

Some scientific questions might seem complex (What chemical reactions allow cells to break the bonds in sugar molecules?), but they don’t have to be. You’ve probably posed many perfectly valid scientific questions yourself: how can airplanes fly, why do cakes rise in the oven, why do apples turn brown once they’re cut? You can discover the answers to many of these science questions in your local library, or investigate them yourself. But many others have not yet been answered by science and could yet lead to astonishing new discoveries. There is a lot we have left to learn about how the world works. For example, we still don’t know much about how your brain remembers to buy milk at the grocery store. Plenty of everyday questions that might pique your curiosity are also the topic of ongoing scientific research.

Discovery: The spark for science

For a scientist (and indeed for anyone thinking scientifically about the world around them), every day holds the possibility of discovery — of coming up with a "brand-new" idea or of observing something that no one has ever seen before. Vast bodies of knowledge have yet to be built and many of the most basic questions about the universe have yet to be answered

Science studies the natural world. This includes the components of the physical universe around us like atoms, plants, ecosystems, people, societies and galaxies, as well as the natural forces at work on those things.

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