okay we are starting with unit one biology basics concept one notes and we're gonna be talking about the nature of science i love this definition from the national academy of sciences when i think about science it says science is a particular way of knowing about the world and i would even add thinking about the world in science explanations are limited to those based on observations in experiments that can be substantiated by other scientists explanations that cannot be based on empirical evidence are not part of science and i love this so much because the emphasis is on a way of thinking and then knowing and observing the world that is based on data and experimentation we're making sense of the natural world by collecting data which i love so much and so one of the things i want to start off clarifying before we go any further are a couple of terms that mean different things in the english language than they do in science and we really need to clarify them so when we're referring to things with these terms we're referring to them in the appropriate scientific way and the terms are fact principle law and theory so a fact in science is an objective meaning not an opinion verifiable observation so for example it is a fact that water boils at 100 degrees celsius that's no one's opinion we can verify it with an experiment that it is true a principle is a statement based on repeated experimental observation that describes an aspect of the world so for example we'll talk about an ecology the greenhouse effect it is a principle that through many repeated experimental observations we can see how earth maintains a certain temperature in the way that a greenhouse maintains a certain temperature for the plants that are in it so it's something that we can we have seen through repeated observations it's a principle now most importantly i want to clarify the terms law and theory we often think of a law as a rule and in science it's a broad concept or principle like we just defined but it's specifically describing a pattern in nature so it's describing how something happens i think law ends with w how ends with w that's how i remember that and often scientific laws are accepted as facts because there's so much experimental evidence and observation that supports it examples here are a lot that we talked about in physical science newton's laws of motion boils gas laws the law of conservation and mass all of these laws describe things that we see existing in nature and are substantiated by experimental evidence a theory in the english language is often just thought of as an idea it is way more than that in science it is an explanation of an observed phenomenon theories organize facts and research from many scientists to explain why something occurs in nature and a theory can never become a factor law it's not like oh once we get enough evidence it becomes a law it can't because it's different it explains why whereas a law describes how those are different things so an example we have a whole unit on this is the theory of evolution or evolutionary theory so many non-science people just think evolution is just this random idea that someone's come up with but they don't realize the countless amount of scientific experimentation and data that's been collected that is organized and it's used to explain why we see certain things happen in nature over time we'll get into that a lot later but uh knowing these definitions is critical okay so i hope what you've kind of heard over these last few slides is data data experiment experiment evidence evidence those are critical words because science is based on experimentation the very nature of science is experimentation and investigation and our understanding is always being built upon as we find out new things it's really fascinating for instance if you go back and look at all of the data that was collected to come up with what we know now about the structure of the atom or the structure of dna and how different scientists findings built upon each other to get to what we know now and that's why scientists is kind of always changing and being built upon one thing i want to address before we move further is there isn't just one way to do science or to do an experiment but there is a general sequence of events that are followed in an investigative process again there's no right or wrong way and it's not like you have to always do step one and then step two and step then step three but for the sake of explanation and understanding we're going to walk through what this general sequence of thought looks like in terms of having thinking scientifically thinking in an investigative way what that looks like so often it starts with asking questions about the world around you science is a study of the natural world conducting background research to see what other people have already found that's where you all hit up your google constructing a hypothesis making a prediction about what you think based on what you've observed testing that out analyzing what you find and then drawing some conclusions from that so we're going to walk through each of these and understand them a little bit more so asking a question often we're making observations about the world around us and that leads us to ask questions so we need to know what an observation is it is a description of something you can see smell touch taste and hear it's not an opinion it has to be objective so an example i can observe that the ground is wet that's something i can feel and it's something i can see from there i can make an inference i can make a guess about what i see based on what i've observed and i can make multiple inferences from one observation so i can observe the ground as wet and then i can infer that it rained or someone was watering the plants or someone spilled their drink that kind of thing so in class we're going to talk about this amazing photo i scanned in from the archives of 1993 in my childhood and you're going to practice making observations and inferences about this picture all right those observations can be qualitative or quantitative qualitative observations describe quality so um think l letters we're using letters we're using words to describe something so that liquid is green or that hole is large or this tastes sour it's a sweet smell that kind of thing whereas quantitative think n for numbers we're using numbers or quantities to measure something so all these different measurements would be quantitative observations and when we're conducting an experiment we really want to conduct or gather as much data as we can um quantitative absolutely but qualitative to support and and build upon those quantitative measurements also so we're gonna practice again with another one of my favorite pictures i want you to make qualitative observations quantitative observations and inferences about this picture and we'll talk about them in class okay when you're making quantitative observations meaning you're collecting data or you're making measurements there are two things we need our quantitative data to be precise and accurate precision is a measure of how close your measurements are to one another so you're asking yourself is the data consistent and is it specific so for consistent if all 30 of your classmates or however many there are measure the same door frame in the classroom are you all all getting consistent measurements maybe they're not all exactly the same but they're very close together that would be precise data we also want it to be specific you don't want to just measure the door frame and say it's about it looks like it's about two meters tall no is it it's 1.85 meters tall we want to do that precise measurements are specific as possible and then of course we want our data and our measurements to be accurate which means accuracy is a measure of how close your measurement is to the correct or accepted value so for instance you're going to ask yourself is this data correct and then the other question i would even ask is is this data reasonable okay so for instance my toddler weighs 30 pounds if someone weighs him and measures that he weighs 10 pounds that is not an accurate measurement and it's also not reasonable you can look at him and say that kid does not weigh 10 pounds he weighs way more than that so or you know if someone says he weighs 50 pounds you'd be like that doesn't seem reasonable 50 pounds is pretty big for a two-year-old you know so we're asking ourselves these kinds of questions as we're collecting our data to make sure they're as precise and accurate as possible we'll practice this but when you're making measurements we want to read as specific as possible on the instrument we're using and then estimate one more place and we'll practice that in class with our measurement stations okay one more thing before we would break if we were in class i'm a visual learner so i want to show you a visual of this precision and accuracy to help you understand these terms sorry i don't know if you heard that my child's toy just went off in the background okay precise and accurate look at this bullseye a bullseye the accurate place to throw the dart is in the center this person throwing these four darts is precise because they're consistently hitting the center and they're accurate because they're always hitting the right spot this start thrower is precise but they're not accurate they're precise because all four are hitting are consistently in the same spot but they're not accurate because they're not where they should be hitting this person is closer to being accurate but they're not precise you know they're around the bullseye every time but they're not consistent where they're throwing and then this person would not be considered accurate or precise at all okay in class these are long notes so i'm breaking them up because we're never going to take notes for more than 10 or 15 minutes hopefully in class so we're going to stop in class and we're going to practice making measurements that are precise and accurate um but for the sake of the lecture video we're just going to keep pushing through to the end okay after you make observations and you ask questions you should conduct background research to see what other people have found out about this and this will lead you to define a purpose or an objective for your experiment that you're designing the overall goal of a scientific investigation is to answer some sort of overarching question so again your observations are leading you to ask questions which are leading you to conduct research to see what's already been found out and then that's leading you to define your purpose um the words in red for my students i'm also as we're walking through this general investigative process i'm going to be pointing out different components of the formal lab report so right for me just like there's not one way to do an experiment there's not one way to formally write up a lab report but for my students we're going to do it um one way just for consistency's sake so you know what i expect and you can practice that and so i like for my students to start off their experiment defining our purpose or objective for the experiment so everything that's in red for my students we're going to be those are going to be the components of a lab report if you're going to formally write one up so this would just be a statement that clearly shows what question you're trying to answer in your investigation what are we trying to determine or figure out all right from there you'll make a hypothesis what do you think's going to happen and this is more than an educated guess it has to be a prediction that's testable it's based on things you've observed and it's typically going to be describing a cause and effect relationship between variables and again there's not one format for a hypothesis but we're going to follow this format just to make it easier on you so that you're not having to always come up creatively following this format is going to give you a pretty solid hypothesis every time and that format is if the iv happens then the dv will happen so the iv is the independent variable or the cause and our cause and effect relationship and the dv is the dependent variable or the effect and if you're in my honors class we're going to expand this even more and we'll put a comma in the sentence and then say because and you're going to also include some predictive reasoning in your hypothesis as well but now we're going to go over iv and dv this is something you've learned probably every year of science but after teaching science for almost a decade i've seen that many students still struggle with this so we're going to review it again because you have to understand it it's so important it's going to come up in every experiment we do all year independent variable this is what we are deliberately changing or manipulating in our investigation usually on the x axis of a graph so the horizontal part but not necessarily we're going to see a graph in a little bit where we have um different color lines and so the we see that and it's color coded so it's not always but generally that's where it's going to go in our different experimental groups and the different things we're testing this should be the only thing that's different we want everything else to be as consistent and controlled as possible so that the only difference is that we're comparing is whatever we're testing our independent variable so for example i don't run but let's say i did and i noticed that every time i run i feel like i can run faster or i feel differently when i run based on whatever it was that i had to drink right before i ran so if i had a glass of water and then went on a run or if i had a cup of coffee and then went on a run it felt like it affected my run i make that observation so that leads me to ask the question does what i drink before i run affect how fast i'm able to run from there i'm gonna make a prediction so maybe i think if i drink gatorade then i will be able to run a mile faster than any other drink or if i drink a starbucks latte then i will run fastest i don't know what it would be but my independent variable what i'm testing or deliberately changing is the type of drink that's what's going to be different each time the race is run is what is drink before that's what i'm going to be manipulating now the dependent variable is what's going to change in response to it the effect it's going to go on the y-axis the vertical part of my graph and we can typically represent it by the data we're collecting so think dependent is the data what am i measuring so think about the running experiment what am i measuring i'm measuring how fast i run my time that's going to represent you know or the effect of my cause which is the type of drink i'm having and so this is really important we're going to stop in class and practice writing hypotheses and identifying ivs and dvs but again sake of the video keep plugging okay next we need to test our hypothesis in an experiment and so you're gonna have to figure out okay how are we gonna do this you'll need to come up with materials what are we gonna need um in a lab report and you're formally writing this i you need to be as specific as possible including amounts brands etc and we want it in a bullet bulleted list so it's really easy to read and replicate i want if i'm doing this running experiment i want someone you know in a different state for me to be able to try it and see if they get similar results from me as i did so i would want to have you know how much are we drinking before 8 ounces 16 what are we drinking you know brands i had you know a you know tropical punch flavored gatorade one before one run and i had a starbucks cinnamon dolce latte before another and then just water another time and a glass of orange juice another time so as specific as possible with those materials so it can be replicated and that's the same with our procedures yes you want to kind of plan out what you're going to do but you can't really write out step by step your experimental procedures until you're doing it so you want to write those as we go and we want them to not be fluffy science we it's not about i always hate when um y'all as my students ask me for how many pages it needs to be i wanted to be as short as possible but still being as detailed and accurate as possible you know i don't i don't want fluff words don't be like then you will go about doing this just say number one pick up this two measure this three drink this you know i want a specific so start with a verb every step again enough detail someone can replicate it but i always say to my students consider your writing to someone who's your same age and knowledge level so you're not writing this to my two-year-old son you don't need to tell him okay first go get your mommy to supervise you second go walk to this table three pick up the drink four swallow it like it doesn't need to be that crazy you're writing to someone on your same level and then again make this a numbered list so it's easy to replicate now before you just dive into doing your experiment you have to consider your experimental group your control group and your constants so i think it'll help if i explain the control group first actually so the control group is your group used for comparison with your experimental groups this is your normal group so thinking about the running experiment i need to know what is my normal one min or what's my normal one mile pace can i run a mile in eight minutes absolutely not is it more like 10 is it more like 15 i don't know but i need to have a control group so that i can compare it to so maybe my normal is drinking water before i run a race normally let's say if i'm running i'm going to have a glass of water and then i'd go on a run that would be my control group i would measure my time running a mile with water before my experimental group is the groups that are being manipulated so that would be all the different trials where i'm drinking starbucks before or i'm drinking orange juice or i'm drinking gatorade something that is different from my norm so sometimes you'll just have one control group one experimental group sometimes you'll have multiple like in this experiment i would do multiple different drinks so i had multiple groups i'm comparing to my one control group then probably the most important thing other than that control group that standard for comparison is constant or controlled variables it's everything else in the experiment we want to hold constant and consistent because i want the only thing different between my control group and my experimental group to be the independent variable what i'm drinking i want everything else to be held constant so that if i do see that i'm running different speeds my time is different i can then say more solidly say that my dependent variable is a result of the independent variable and not oh i had a burrito the night before and so i wasn't feeling good or oh this one time i ran a mile up a hill as opposed to on a track and so i went way slower okay so let's say if i'm using multiple runners not just myself all of us would need to be around the same age gender exercise like cardiovascular health and fitness same food before same training we did before this same shoes you know someone's not running a flip-flops and another person in you know nikes whatever it may be now it's impossible unless you have robots to keep everything exactly the same and so that's why you want to have as many repeated trials as possible i don't want to just test this thing out three times i want to test it out a thousand times a hundred thousand times if i possibly could so that i could ensure that my results weren't just a fluke and they weren't just you know lucky and due to chance so i can eliminate any potential errors and inconsistencies and keep my data as precise as possible this is why oftentimes we're going to collect class data so we can have more trials because each group can do several trials and then we can collect them all okay we're gonna practice identifying and playing these things out in class but again for the sake of the video we're gonna keep going okay once you do an experiment you're gonna collect your data and typically we're going to organize our results into a data table as we're collecting it and then later we want to look at it in a way that's easier to interpret and analyze and oftentimes that's a graph it's much easier to look at a visual representation of the data than just a table of numbers and so your graph is typically going to be a line graph if we're comparing quantitative data so if you have numbers on your x and y axis axes excuse me that's a line graph if you have words down here like categories like red green yellow blue and then numbers here so qualitative versus quantitative that's going to call for a bar graph and then if you're looking at parts of a hole that's going to be a circle graph or a pie chart and then we're going to analyze that data you're going to talk about what the data shows and what the data shows only you're going to look through for trends or patterns you may see and most importantly for my students you have to discuss potential errors in the data this is often referred to as the air analysis okay so what could have happened that was inconsistent that wasn't held constant that wasn't controlled that could have impacted our data and and messed with it this is especially important when we're collecting class data as a group because you know your lab group may have done not done things identical to someone else's lab group to another person's and if we're collecting class data and then calculating averages we have to take those potential inconsistencies into account so you have to describe those in your analysis section you should never not be able to think of at least three i mean there should be unlimited amounts of inconsistencies you could come up with things that could have potentially affected it and last but not least we'll draw conclusions we'll make an explicit statement about whether your hypothesis your initial prediction can be supported or is rejected by the data you collected so data either supports what you predicted or it fails for support so you reject your prediction we never ever say that data is proven or disproving anything and the last for my students i want to know you know what did we learn from this and how can this be applied to real world situations you know maybe you learned from the running experiment that you run really fast after you have gatorade as opposed to water and so the real world application is drink gatorade i don't know but that's what we want to kind of connect back here into our conclusion so in class we're going to be um investigating the effectiveness of hand sanitizers for soaps and cleanliness um and we're gonna walk through this whole investigative thought process together and we'll also write a formal lab report too but the last thing i want to mention in these concept onenotes is we're talking about the nature of science i can't talk about the inherent nature of science in the 21st century without also talking about technology so science leads to the advancement of our knowledge we're answering questions through our science and our scientific investigations based on what we're observing technology advances society it solves problems based on the needs that we have the official definition for technology is the application of scientific discoveries to meet human needs and goals through the development of products and processes so it's in i mean it's integrated with science we really can't talk about technology and science without one another and one of the fields of science i know love because my brother is an engineer and i went to a school in high school that had a pre-engineering program i was in because i was so fascinated is engineering it's that application of science and math or scientific and mathematic principles to solve problems and so the field of engineering is such a beautiful example of science and technology put together and and at the end of this concept we're actually going to look at a bunch of careers in science that um you can have because science is so a part of so many different careers but especially engineering and so the last thing i want to walk through with you is a technological design thought process again just like with designing an experiment there is not one way to do this this is not like step one two three four but there's a general thought process when designing technology to meet a need or solve a problem that one can walk through mentally so first it's identifying what the problem is what's going on where's their need what is their problem so for instance i live on an island currently and you know once upon a time in the 80s they realized it was really hard for people to get onto the island by boat because not everyone owns a boat and if there's an emergency and you're stuck on the island it's really hard to get off so that was a problem so they had to design a solution this is where you brainstorm you research maybe you sketch some things out you narrow down your design and you consider constraints so where i live they had to figure out okay obviously we need a bridge you know the island's close enough to the mainland that a bridge is the most logical way to help cars get on um back and forth easily but there are a lot of things to consider they had to consider the cost how much time there was you know do we need this bridge done by a certain time or do we have an unlimited amount of time to build it materials what's available you know what's durable what's going to work because you have this you know you're building a bridge over the ocean you know not over just like mud it's over the actual ocean what's going to be environmentally conscious what's going to last a long time these are all things to consider and it's very very rare nearly impossible to ever have a perfect solution and a perfect design but you want the benefits to outweigh the risks in terms of what you're designing and then from there you know you got to build it and test it out and make improvements and you know off maybe you're going to have to go back to the drawing board that's why this isn't just a step-by-step thing and go back to the design phase and then build and test some more then go back and brainstorm some more and build and test until you kind of get to the point where you can evaluate and say okay does this bridge solve our problem of needing to get to this island and back to the mainland or whatever your issue may be does it and does it meet all the constraints is it within budget do we get the right timing and that kind of thing and so to test this out and to test this kind of thought process out we're going to do one of my all-time favorite lab activities it's called the water tower challenge so we're going to do that in class now and i hope this concept has helped y'all to kind of see how we are going to think in this class and what the nature of its science is it's investigative and it's based on data and it's very experimental and very hands-on and so we're gonna do all of that in this class this year and i hope y'all are as excited as i am