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In the Press. DIYSci Activities. February 26, Misconception 1 "Evolution is 'just a theory'". Discuss each example with students, focusing on whether the statement is based on evidence and under what conditions the statement is true.
Ask students to organize these statements in some type of relative order, from that which they most readily accept to that which they consider most tentative. Ask students to identify each of the original statements as a Fact, Hypothesis, Law, or Theory and to revisit the arrange of statements, from that which they would most readily accept to that which they consider most tentative, and make any changes deemed necessary.
Did the order change? Theories are concise, coherent, systematic, predictive, and broadly applicable, often integrating and generalizing many hypotheses. Any scientific theory must be based on a careful and rational examination of the facts.
Facts and theories are two different things. An important part of scientific theory includes statements that have observational consequences.
A good theory, like Newton's theory of gravity , has unity, which means it consists of a limited number of problem-solving strategies that can be applied to a wide range of scientific circumstances.
Another feature of a good theory is that it formed from a number of hypotheses that can be tested independently. A scientific theory is not the end result of the scientific method; theories can be proven or rejected, just like hypotheses. This led them to wonder; how can something that is nothing exert pressure? The answer was, of course, that it wasn't nothing; and led to the formulation of the kinetic theory of gases gases are made up of many very tiny particles which are constantly in motion.
So this theory is used today, and has not been and in my opinion will not soon be changed. Let's expand on this a bit more.
The reason it is called an "Ideal Gas Law" is because it works for "ideal gases;" gases whose particles are so small in comparison to the container they're in that you can ignore them, and which do not interact at all with each other.
Under most conditions, this law describes the behavior of real gases pretty well a real gas has particles which interact with each other to varying degrees depending on chemical properties, and which have a real mass which at normal temperatures and pressures is negligible but becomes a problem at high pressures. The fact that it doesn't hold up all the time for real gases doesn't disprove it, since the law states that it is a law for "ideal gases" see how that works?
It might seem like cheating to do that, but it isn't, because it is impossible with today's technology to do the calculations required to determine exact equations for real gases. Another case: molecular theory. The theory of electrons and orbitals and such has long been a problem.
Originally it was not understood very well, and just said that it had something to do with the atomic orbitals of the atoms involved. Later, something called valence bond theory stated that electrons in the valence shells of atoms could be shared by atoms to form chemical bonds.
Orbital hybridization theory explained how atomic orbitals could be rearranged to explain the geometry found in real atoms, and molecular orbital theory explained how atomic orbitals could be combined to share electrons and form molecular orbitals. The latest explanation, which accounts for some things in the geometry found in real molecules, is the Valence Shell Electron Pair Repulsion theory, which holds up to everything we know about atoms and electrons atoms can rearrange their orbitals to share electrons, and since electrons share the same charge they repel each other, and they generally form groups of two in any given orbital for reasons I don't care to explain.
If you're more lost after this explanation, it's ok, you haven't got to it yet. Christopher Columbus is often credited with being the first person to believe that the world was round. This idea is incorrect in the first place Aristotle and a couple other Greeks believed this, and actually proved it, with a very good estimation of the actual diameter of the earth ; in fact he was not even the main believer of it at his time most educated Europeans in the fifteenth century knew of this; Columbus just believed the world was a lot smaller than it actually is.
What place does this have here? Well, Columbus didn't have a theory, and he wasn't a scientist, and it's another thing that is often misunderstood. What he observed was this: The planed Venus appeared to reflect light from the sun. In addition, from the Earth's perspective, Venus appeared to sometimes disappear behind the sun, and other times to be in front of it.
At the time, the scientific establishment and the Church accepted that the Earth was the center of the universe and everything revolved around us. He observed all of the planetary bodies in the solar system that could be found at the time, and they all fit this hypothesis. His views got him in trouble with the academic establishment, his sponsors, and worst of all in the times of the Inquisition with the Church.
In he went to Rome to plead his case He was told not to tell of a sun-centered solar system as fact He talked about it as a "what if However, upon publishing his book, he was later brought to Rome to defend his ideas and called a heretic. He was required to take back his theory and placed under house arrest, and worst of all or at least to me, probably not to him but idk , his book was banned.
He was allowed to move once, but lived for the rest of his life under house arrest because of his observations. Fortunately for us, we know now that he wasn't just making it all up. Over the years the bans on his books were gradually lifted, and in the year well within my lifetime the Pope "expressed regret for how the Galileo affair was handled, and officially conceded that the Earth was not stationary, as the result of a study conducted by the Pontifical Council for Culture" Wikipedia.
As my final example I'd like to bring to light another, slightly more recent scientist, who proved something which was found disagreeable, and which is still a matter for debate to this day, despite the amount of evidence on his side. Charles Darwin is one of the most maligned scientists to ever live.
At the time he published his findings, he had put off publishing for decades already for fear of the uproar it would create; and he in fact underestimated what truly happened.
People believed he was calling into question their fundamental beliefs; they ridiculed him, parodied his theory, and all kinds of things. This was not for his lack of proof; he had gathered sufficient evidence to back his theory which, I might add, has yet to be disproven of how species change over time which previously had been claimed to not happen, even though new breeds of dogs had been developed within the decade.
Nor for a lack of independent corroborating evidence; the event that got him to publish his paper when he did was a letter from Charles Wallace, a naturalist studying species in Australia, which contained a theory exactly the same as Darwin's own Darwin published right away because he had been organizing information for years, and didn't want Wallace to get credit first, which is actually fair since Darwin's work was done first too.
Today, Charles Darwin's theory of evolution is widely accepted by the scientific community, especially with all the evidence that continues to accumulate in its favor, but certain groups view it with something less than enthusiasm. They claim it is "just a theory" and that it should be given equal time with other explanations explanations which I don't find entirely incompatible, but many of which are not at all scientific.
I wish people would get over it. Species change over time in response to changes in their environment, through natural and sexual selection no that's not a dirty word, it just means every guy wants the hottest girl and every girl wants the hottest guy, it's true for all species. And Charles Darwin never said "humans evolved from monkeys;" what he suggested and, what modern genetic research has agreed with is that, some point in the distant past, humans and apes branched off from a common ancestral species, which was neither human nor ape.
Genes may influence human beings, but so, too, do epigenetic changes. These modifications alter which genes get turned on, and are both heritable and easily influenced by the environment. The environment that shapes human behavior can be anything from the chemicals a fetus is exposed to in the womb to the block a person grew up on to the type of food they ate as a child, Kruger said. All these factors interact in a messy, unpredictable way.
Does it mean statistically significant, or does it mean important? In statistics, something is significant if a difference is unlikely to be due to random chance. But that may not translate into a meaningful difference, in, say, headache symptoms or IQ.
The term has become synonymous with being virtuous, healthy or good. But not everything artificial is unhealthy, and not everything that's natural is good for you. Natural's sibling "organic" also has a problematic meaning, he said. While organic simply means "carbon-based" to scientists, the term is now used to describe pesticide-free peaches and high-end cotton sheets, as well. But though these words may be routinely misunderstood, the real problem, scientists say, is that people don't get rigorous science education in middle school and high school.
As a result, the public doesn't understand how scientific explanations are formed , tested and accepted. What's more, the human brain may not have evolved to intuitively understand key scientific concepts such as hypotheses or theories, Kruger said.
Most people tend to use mental shortcuts to make sense of the cacophony of information they're presented with every day. One of those tendencies is to make a "binary distinction between something that is true in an absolute sense and something that's false or a lie," Kruger said.
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