PHY 102 Chapter Notes - Chapter 1: Dmitri Mendeleev, Scientific Method
Document Summary
A discipline that asks and answers questions about the working of the physical world. A way of conducting an on-going investigation of our physical surroundings. Plato argued that we cannot deduce the true nature of the universe by trusting our senses. Observing the physical world can never put us in contact with reality but will doom us to a lifetime of wrestling with shadows. Observation compliments pure reasoning and thus has an important role to play in learning about the universe. Observations: in which we observe nature without manipulating it. Experiments: in which we manipulate some aspect of nature and observe the outcome. We generalize our experience into a synthesis that summarizes what we have learned about the way the world works. Ways: the distance traveled by a falling object is proportional to the square of the time of the object"s travel.
