What is Science?

The word "Science" brings to mind many pictures: thick textbooks, white lab coats and microscopes, astronomers looking through telescopes, naturalists in rainforests, Einstein's equations written on chalkboards, space shuttle launches, beakers.

Bubbles... All these images reflect some aspect of science. But none of them give a complete picture. Because science has many facets. Science is a body of knowledge and a process.

Science in school can sometimes seem like a disparate, static set of facts listed in a textbook, but that's only a small part of the story.

Equally important is the discovery process that enables science to connect individual facts into a coherent and comprehensive understanding of the natural world. Science is fascinating.

Science is how we know what is in the universe and how these things work today, how they worked in the past, and how they will work in the future.

Scientists are motivated by the excitement of seeing or discovering something no one knew before. It can be used to develop new technologies, cure diseases and solve many other problems. Science continues.

Nowadays, science is used in our every day life whether it is in school, home, office, lab, college and many more. Not only this, the electronic appliances that we used in our every day life is also science.

Science is constantly improving and expanding our knowledge of the universe, leading to new questions for future research. Science will never be vanished. Science is a global human endeavor, people all over the world are participating in the scientific process. And you can too!

The process of scientific discovery is not limited to professional scientists working in laboratories. You may be thinking scientifically every day, but do not realize it.

The experience of inferring that your car won't start because of a faulty fuel pump or learning that a centipede in your backyard prefers shady rocks is fundamentally similar to classic scientific discoveries, such as identifying the DNA double helix.

All of these activities involve observation and analysis of evidence and bring the satisfaction of finding answers that make sense from 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 (example, 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. We still have a lot to learn about how the world works. For example, we still don't know much about how the brain remembers buying milk at the grocery store. Many everyday questions that can pique your curiosity are also the subject of ongoing scientific research.