The terminology of science and physics
I.0 Science
Science should predict and explain. Scientists should not become complacent with their “common wisdom,” but rather embrace radically new ideas. While some of the old wisdom remains, some is also replaced by newer ideas. The scientific method deals with how observations will lead to hypothesis and thus to new observations and theories pertaining to science (these are the radically new ideas). Tests of hypothesis are usually very quantitative. Engineers as the arm of applied science should be competitive and bold enough to implement these scientific ideas into practical aspect with a view to improve quality of life for human kind.
The earlier implementation of the Scientific Method
is attributed to Galileo.
The Scientific Method is made up of five steps. To
follow them you should:
Recognize that there is a problem.
1. Make an educated guess as to
the reasons for the problem (formulate your hypothesis).
2.
Consider the consequences of
an experiment, which will test the hypothesis.
3.
Carry out the experiment.
4.
Form the clearest, least complex
statement of the law proven. This result is a theory.
A principle or scientific law is a scientific hypothesis,
which has been repetitively proven to be true and never disproved by an
experiment.
Physics is the most fundamental science, concerned
with the basic principles of the universe. The science of physics helps
to explain why our physical environment behaves as it does, it has a capacity
to predict how nature will behave in one situation on the basis of experimental
data obtained in another situation. We use the same data that Galileo
experimented with in the 14th century to predict some of the physics problems
that occur in space exploration (Galileo would not send a telescope to
his arch enemy Kepler because Galileo still
argued that orbits were round not elliptical, Kepler
had been the one to introduce the fact that orbits may be from his observations,
they were bitter enemies over this fact).
