ENVIRONMENTAL EARTH SCIENCE

NAME __________________ BLOCK _______ DATE ______

1. List five kinds of knowledge that are not science, and briefly describe the way each kind acquires information. For example, history acquires knowledge through written records.

1.1

1.2

1.3

1.4

1.5

 2.1 Is science a collection of facts or is it an active process? What part of the definition shows this?

   2.2 Does science knowledge stay constant, or does it change?

Explain.

2.3 What is the difference between observing something and measuring something (define them)? Why can two people observe the same thing and remember different things about it?

2.4 Use a dictionary to find the differences between subjective knowledge and objective knowledge. Which is produced by observation and which by measurement?

2.5 Which is "better" knowledge to use for resource management: objective or subjective? Explain.

2.6 Inference means that you decide something is true based on some previous knowledge or assumption. Describe how you do this to figure out room numbers at this school.

3. Which of the non-science areas of knowledge that you listed use different methods than science to acquire knowledge? Which use similar methods? Explain

 4. The following steps of a scientific method are not in the right order. Use your own reasoning and your text to number them in a logical sequence:

 _____ RESEARCH: find out what has already been discovered about a particular problem through (1) information task definition, (2)information seeking strategies, (3) information source location, (4) use of information, (5) synthesis the information, and (6) evaluation of the information

 _____ VERIFICATION: someone else investigates the same thing you did and proves that you were right or wrong.

 _____ recognize that something needs to be found out, IDENTIFY a problem.

 _____ HYPOTHESISing: after finding out what others have discovered about something, make an educated guess about the answer to a problem

 _____ GATHER DATA from an experiment or from observation

  _____ come to a CONCLUSION that your hypothesis was wrong or right, based on data.

 _____ TEST your hypothesis by doing a controlled experiment or by observing

 _____ PUBLISH the results of your work so that others can benefit or prove that you were right or wrong

List the steps in a scientific method in their proper order here:

5. How does a hypothesis become a theory? How is the word hypothesis related to the word theory? (Hint: look up what the root HYPO means.)

6. How is the term theory often misused outside of science class?

7. How does a theory begin to be called a natural law?