What is Science?
Science is making a hypothesis and testing your ideas to design a scientific theory. Any hypothesis you create needs to have steps and procedures that others can repeat. If an experiment is only completed one time, it is not clear whether the same results will occur when the experiment is done again. When a hypothesis has been tested over and over with the same results, it may become a theory. Whether a hypothesis becomes a theory is under the discretion of a group of scientific people believing it is truth. Though a scientific hypothesis can never become fact because there are too many variables.
When related to the Mystery Tubes activity we did in class, our group also had to come up with a hypothesis. We did this by first playing with the mystery tube and determining what should move with each string pull. We then designed the string pattern for the inside of the mystery tube. Once the entire class decided on one model, it essentially became our class theory. Though again, this can never become fact because we had no absolute way to know how the strings were designed within the tube.
What is the role of language in science?
Language is incredibly important in the world of science for many different reasons. Since a theory is created from the compilation of varying scientists experiments, there needs to be a way for scientists to view the results from prior experiments. Language is essential in this case, because without it there would be no way to divulge exactly what steps and results another scientist had. Language is needed for communication between scientists.
Language in science is a lot different than casual language. When writing a scientific paper, it is more likely to be factual and direct than with an average english paper. Scientific language has to be extremely precise for people to repeat experiments and understand journals. Specific words can be essential to language definitions in science. In class we discussed how if the word "Semipermeable" is left out of the definition for Osmosis, it changes the meaning of the definition.
