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Overview:
Students participate in a quick activity and discuss whether they were doing science. They then read a story about Walter Alvarez, discuss the process of science, and trace his scientific journey using the Science Flowchart.Author/Source:
UCMP Grade:
College Discipline:
Nature and Process of Science, Earth science Time:
90 minutes Concepts:
Correspondence to the Next Generation Science Standards is indicated in parentheses after each relevant concept. See our conceptual framework for details. - What is science?
- Science is both a body of knowledge and the process for building that knowledge.
- Science aims to build increasingly broad and coherent explanations of the natural world.
- Science focuses on natural phenomena and processes.
- Science works only with testable ideas.
- Scientists strive to test their ideas with evidence from the natural world; a hallmark of science is exposing ideas to testing.
- Scientific knowledge is open to question and revision as new ideas surface and new evidence is discovered.
- Scientific ideas cannot be absolutely proven.
- Because it has been tested, scientific knowledge is reliable.
- Science is ongoing; answering one scientific question frequently leads to additional questions to be investigated.
- How science works
- Hypotheses and theories
- The social side of science
- The real process of science is complex, iterative, and can take many different paths.
- The process of science involves observation, exploration, testing, communication, and application.
- Scientific observations can be made directly with our own senses or may be made indirectly through the use of tools.
- Scientists test their ideas (hypotheses and theories) by figuring out what expectations are generated by an idea and making observations to find out whether those expectations are borne out.
- Scientists can test ideas about events and processes long past, very distant, and not directly observable.
- Scientists test their ideas using multiple lines of evidence.
- All scientific tests involve making assumptions, but these assumptions can be independently tested, increasing our confidence in our test results.
- Scientists often try to generate multiple explanations for what they observe.
- Scientists use multiple research methods (experiments, observational research, comparative research, and modeling) to collect data.
- Scientists look for patterns in their observations and data.
- Researchers share their findings with the scientific community through scientific publications.
- Scientists aim for their studies to be replicable.
- Hypotheses are proposed explanations for a narrow set of phenomena.
- Hypotheses are usually inspired and informed by previous research and/or observations. They are not guesses.
- Science depends on communication within the scientific community.
- Scientists usually work collaboratively.
- Scientists scrutinize each other's work through peer review and other processes.
- The scientific community motivates researchers in their investigations by providing recognition and, sometimes, a sense of competition.
- Science relies on the accumulated knowledge of the scientific community to move forward.
- The scientific community is global and diverse.
- Scientists are creative.
Teacher background:
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