We continued our discussion of the requirements of science today by adding two more concepts.
First, everything we talk about in science has to be part of the natural world. All naturally occurring events must have a natural cause to explain them. For example, hundreds of years ago, people looked at a rainstorm and couldn't come up with a natural explanation for it. So, they made up 'supernatural' explanations, which usually had something to do with a superior being or force. We now know the true, natural, scientific causes of rain, thunder and lightning and we are fairly certain that it has nothing to do with doing a rain dance! Other things that wouldn't be considered part of the natural world are religions, myths (like vampires and mermaids), and pseudo-sciences like astrology and fortune telling. We practiced categorizing events into natural and non-natural.
Second, scientific events are predictable. This should make a lot of sense; we learned on Monday that science is consistent, so we should be able to recognize patterns and make educated guesses about what might happen in the future. In this class, we will be using a very specific format for writing predictions. We practiced making predictions using this format in class.
Coming up:
Friday, Aug. 20 - Notebook checks
Tuesday, Sept. 3 - Quiz over Requirements of Science (CONPTT)
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