Physics 1090 Unit 1: Science as a Way of Learning

...my father had taught me, looking at the bird he says, “Do you know what that bird is? It’s a brown throated thrush—but in Portugese it’s a —, in Italian it’s a —. He says, “in Chinese it’s a —, in Japanese a —, et cetera.” “Now,” he says, “You know all the languages, you want to know what the name of that bird is and when you’ve finished with all that,” he says, “you’ll know absolutely nothing whatever about the bird. You only know about humans in different places and what they call the bird. Now,” he says, “let’s look at the bird and what it’s doing.” —Richard Feynman, NOVA #1002, 1983.

Unit objectives

• Make specific, detailed observations of an object of study.
• Ask questions about an observed process.
• Propose experiments to answer questions about the process.
• Test explanations by comparing to observations.

Class stuff

• Reading guide for Tuesday [HTML] [PDF]
• Homework questions for the unit

Notes on observation

• Notes on scientific observation from Batesville (Indiana) High School
• Wikipedia’s entry on the scientific method

The Drinking bird

• Drinking bird video from Sixty Symbols