Читать книгу Geology For Dummies - Alecia M. Spooner - Страница 27

Science is not a secret society for people who like to wear lab coats and spend hours looking into microscopes. Science is simply the asking and answering of questions. Any time you make a decision by considering what you know, collecting new information, forming an educated guess, and figuring out whether your guess is right, you participate in acts of science.

Take a very simple example: choosing a shampoo. You’ve probably tried different types or brands of shampoo, observed how each one leaves your hair looking and feeling, and then decided which shampoo you wanted to purchase the next time. This process of observation, testing, and decision-making is all part of the scientific approach to problem-solving. You follow this process every day in multiple situations as you make decisions about what to buy, what route to take in your car, what to eat for dinner, and so on.

Don’t underestimate the role of science in your daily life. Every interaction you participate in — with the physical world and with other people — is governed by the natural laws discovered and described by scientists in multiple fields of specialization. New products and technologies are the result of ongoing answer-seeking in the sciences. And explanations of how human beings effect and are effected by the natural world are constantly being updated by new scientific discoveries. Keep reading to find out how science is done using a step-by-step approach called the scientific method.