Geology Reference
In-Depth Information
very same thing, without the fancy name. In Chapter 2, I present the scientific method in
detail. Here, I offer a quick overview of what it entails.
Making observations every day
Observations
are simply information collected through your five senses. You could not
move through the world without collecting information from your senses and making de-
cisions based on that information.
Consider a simple example: Standing at a crosswalk, you look both ways to determine if
a car is coming and if the approaching car is going slow enough for you to safely cross
the street before it arrives. You have made an observation, collected information, and
based a decision on that information — just like a scientist!
Jumping to conclusions
You constantly use your collected observations to draw conclusions about things. The
more information you collect (the more observations you make), the more solid your
conclusion will be. The same process occurs in scientific exploration. Scientists gather
information through observations, develop an educated guess (called a
hypothesis
)
about how something works, and then seek to test their educated guess through a series
of experiments.
No scientist wants to jump to a false conclusion! Good science is based on many obser-
vations and is well-tested through repeated experiments. The most important scientific
discoveries are usually based on the educated guesses, experiments, and continued
questioning of a large number of scientists.
Focusing on Rock Formation and Trans-
formation
As I explore in detail in Part II of this topic, the foundation of geology is the examination
and study of rocks. Rocks are, literally, the building blocks of the earth and its features
(such as mountains, valleys, and volcanoes). The materials that make up rocks both in-
side and on the surface of the earth are constantly shifting from one form to another.
This cycle and the processes of rock formation and change can be traced through ob-
servable characteristics of rocks found on earth's surface today.
