What is Science?

"“Defend Science” was initiated in 2005 in response to a massive wave of attacks on science unleashed during President George W. Bush’s administration. These attacks occurred on many fronts and included at their core attacks on the very foundation of science - scientific method and thinking."

So what is science? In an article (which can be seen by clicking the attached link) scientists, philosophers and educators get together and talk about what science really is. Below are some Q and A's on the article. http://www.defendscience.org/statement.html
 Some of the answers given to the questions below do not connect with my personal thoughts or feelings, this is just all pulled from the article.

1. Q: What is science? Science is means of inquiry
   
2. Q: Isn't most of what we know about the universe and world just a theory, not a fact? (Explain what is theory and what is fact in terms of the general population.):
   • Fact: In science, an observation that has been repeatedly confirmed.
   • law: A descriptive generalization about how some aspect of the natural world behaves under stated circumstances.
   • hypothesis: A testable statement about the natural world that can be used to build more complex inferences and explanations.
   • theory: In science, a well-substantiated explanation of some aspect of the natural world that can incorporate facts, laws, inferences, and tested hypotheses.
   Some people this what we know is a theory. To many, proof needs to be tangible, sure we have some forms of tangible proof from our theories, but its not enough to convince a lot of people that the explanation given is how our universe came to be. The fact is, well..none of us know for sure how our universe began. Theory to them (the general public) is an idea we have based off of some "proof". By that I mean our time line, we have created this timeline of earth's existence based on research about our soil, fossils, etc. Just because we have this information still doesn't hold solid facts that a big bang created our universe.
3. Q: What is anthropomorphic climate change, is it science? It is the change in our climate due to humans. Humans are some of if not entirely the most destructive of creatures. We take, take and take but don't give back. We are destroying this planet at a rate so fast that we will run out of natural resources (things that took billions of years to be created) in our grand-great grand children's lifetimes. The way we operate is going to destroy our planet. It is already changing our climate. We are melting Polar Caps, we are single handedly causing global warming. But it isn't just the carbon footprint of us everyday Joe's...no it stems way higher. Huge cooperation pouting our air and lakes are doing this. These same big money people who are attacking science. This is science, everything in one way or another is science, but big money people and companies don't see it, they don't want to see it, because they would rather get rich, than create a better world for our youth and their future. They don't want to see or admit it because they can't handle looking themselves in the mirror.
4. Q: What is the young Earth theory, is it science? It is a religious belief that the earth universe and all existence were created by God. In my opinion it is science. We don't know how the Earth came to be. Some people believe God created it and we will know and understand when we get to Heaven. Others do not think that way. Science is a study of an idea. Someone asks a question then tests, experiments and observes to see more. To some people this needs to be a tangible process, to others prayer is enough. Some people use texts books, others use the Bible. I don't think you entirely have to discriminate between religion and science, I think in someways they can go hand in hand.
5. Q: What is intelligent design, is it science? It is the theory that life, or the universe, cannot have arisen by chance and was designed and created by some intelligent entity. I for the same reasons above believe it is considered science.
6. Q: What is the theory of fossil succession, is it science?
   In the same way that the oldest rocks are found in the bottom layer of the earth, the oldest fossils also followed the same chronology as they appear in the same set of rock layers, or strata. Ultimately this is what the theory deals with. I do think it is a science. You are studying something based on an observation.
7. Q: Can a person accept principles of the Nature of Science and still believe in religion or have faith? According to the people in this article, no. Me personally, I feel they can. I understand and accept many principals of nature. I don't think evolution is wrong, but it just isn't my belief. I think it is very important as an educator to teach both sides. As a mother I will teach my children what the bible says, but also explain evolution, they will have questions and be confused, but I feel I will bring them up to understand the importance of knowing both, but maybe just believing in one. As a teacher it isn't that simple. There are pretty strict rules on what you can and can't say in terms of religion. This is done so we aren't being biast against any religions because it is very possible we will have students that are a part of families that all may have separate beliefs. That is fine, and I understand that we don't have time in a school year to spend teaching about all the different beliefs of evolution or how humans came to be. In science we teach evolution because that is what people have proof of. I don't think it is wrong to teach it. My answer is hands down to this, because as a teacher you need to know your boundries. You can have personal beliefs and still teach the principals of science.
8. Q: Where and/or what is the power of science? "
   And today this dominant political agenda is profoundly allied and intertwined with an extremist (and extremely anti-science) ideological agenda put forward by powerful fundamentalist religious forces commonly known as the Religious Right."
9. Q: Is science under attack? Acording to this article, yes. The problem is these attacks are coming from people who don't know what science really is or the importance of it. They are coming from fundementalists. "These fundamentalists now have extensive influence and representatives in major institutions of the U.S. government, including Congress and the White House. This itself goes a long way towards explaining why science itself is under such unprecedented attack."

Crystal Growing Activity

Salt makes a wonderful and cheap item to grow crystals for a science experiment. My group and I chose to use Mrs. Stweart's Salt Crystal Garden using pipe cleaners, cardboard, and sponges as our bases. Below are pictures of the progression of our experiment.

What is a Fossil

Fossils "are the preserved remains or traces of animals, plants, and other organisms from the remote past." In my science class we talked about what fossils are and how to teach elementary students about them. Fossil toy eggs like the one in the picture below are expansive. They are great ideas for activities on teaching fossils, but they aren't exactly budget friendly. To surpass this expense we decided to make our own fossil molds out of plaster, sand and water.

Our Molds:
For our molds we decided to do three different experiments. We chose to keep sand as a constant and use 41.3 grams every time.
For Cup #1 we used 31.6 grams plaster, 41.5 grams of sand, and 25 ml of water
For Cup #2 we used 214.7 grams of plaster, 41.5 grams of sand, and  100ml
For Cup #3 we used 26.6 grams of plaster, 41.5 grams of sand, and 15ml of water

 Once our fossils hardened, we cracked them open with hammers and chisels to look how our molds ended up. Molds one and two had molds the third did not. We didn't come up with a mold mixture that was...usable. The first mold needed more water, and a little more sand. It was very concrete. The second one was probably the best one of the three. It was almost usable in a class, but needed less plaster. It was a little too hard to get open because of all the plaster, but was still a little crumbly and moist. The third one chipped the shell, and fell apart because there was too much sand. That mix needed more plaster and a little more water with the plaster.

All in all this is a great activity for your students to do in your class, once you find the right mold mixture! Below are pictures of our fossil mold experiment:

Life, The Universe, and Everything

There are a lot of different theories about how the universe was created. The fact of the matter is, no one really knows. Sure, we can make logical guesses based on specific factors, but all in all no one really knows for sure how our universe came to be. 
 Two people by the name of Scott and McClure had a few ideas of their own. They're beliefs on how the universe came to be stemmed into five main groups:

• Creation ex nihiloin which the creation is through the thought, word, dream or bodily secretions of a divine being.
  

  These myths see creation as a result of divine emissions as 'vomit, sweat, urination, defecation, masturbation, web-spinning, etc. This is just gross. There isn't any, one specific flaw with this, the whole thing just makes no sense in comparison to what we know about our normal theory of how the universe came to be.

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• Earth diver creation in which a diver, usually a bird or amphibian sent by a creator, plunges to the seabed through a primordial ocean to bring up sand or mud which develops into a terrestrial world
  
  -this is normally though of as the miracle of birth; life emerging from the smallest particle. These myths typically begin with a primordial sea into which the god descends to bring back the materials necessary for creating the world.
  The problem with this myth is that it doesn't explain the creation of other plants such as mars that don't have water. 
• Emergence myths in which progenitors pass through a series of worlds and metamorphoses until reaching the present world
  
  -In these myths, a first creature, human, or race enters our world from another world. The first world parallels the womb and is often too small for its occupant. This is the myth about evolution of humanity; humans as participants in creation. This myth is also flawed because we have evidence of earth and creature on Earth that existed long before human type species.
• Creation by the dismemberment of a primordial being. Basically creation has a cost.
  These myths focus on creation as a consequence of the sacrifice of a god. Typically the sacrificed bodies become some part of the newly created world. The flaw with this theory is there is no type of evidence to support this. We can make assumptions that the big bang theory is what created our universe by inferring specific things using "proof" that craters hit our planets due to the giant holes we have. There is nothing to use as a form of evidence or "proof" that there was a god that sacrificed something and that's how we got our universe. 
  
• Creation by the splitting or ordering of a primordial unity such as the cracking of a cosmic egg or a bringing order from chaos. This is basically the myth of making room for life. These myths focus on separating the various parts of the universe and embuing certain portions with life or the potentiality for life. The problem with that is there is life all over the universe. It may not be life like you and I but there is still life. There is life all over our planet, it's not just in specific parts.
  
  Although there are many more ideas beyond this as to how our universe was created, we normally associate the most...logical idea to be the Big Bang Theory. This theory is
  "The prevailing cosmological model for the universe from the earliest know periods through its subsequent large-scale evolution." In 1929 Edwin Hubble discovered that the Universe is expanding at an enormous speed. Hubble noted that galaxies outside our own Milky Way were all moving away from us, each at a speed proportional to its distance from us. He quickly realized what this meant that there must have been an instant in time (now known to be about 14 billion years ago) when the entire Universe was contained in a single point in space. The Universe must have been born in this single violent event which came to be known as the "Big Bang." This is the theory that we mostly follow today as to how our universe was created. It follows many scientific beliefs because we base this theory off of things we can try to prove thanks to animals, frozen in time (fossils), by calculating the age of dirt, and by calculating specific groups of fossil fuels. Unlike the theories above, we are basing the big bang theory off of science, measurements, calculations, all tangible things that we can prove. Because of that, the Big Bang Theory is that of which makes most sense to teach to the younger generations.