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CONTENTS
UNIT 3 ENZYMES
5.1 Respiration
5.2 How do plants harness light energy in photosynthesis
What is science?
The word science comes from the Latin word scientia, which means ‘knowledge’:
But science is not just about having knowledge: science is a unique system of acquiring
knowledge based on scientific method
Science is an ongoing effort to find new information and principles which can increase human
knowledge and understanding.
In their research, scientists collect evidence that supports or disproves a particular suggested
explanation of a natural phenomenon.
One important idea in science is that any suggested explanation of a phenomenon should be
capable of being proved wrong.
If there is no way of proving it wrong, how can other people accept that it is correct?
This is what distinguishes science from religious beliefs.
This science is sometimes called experimental science because it depends very heavily on
experimentation to obtain the information.
Applied science the use of scientific research to meet certain human needs.
The process by which biologists and all other scientists approach their work.
For centuries, people based their explanations of what they saw going on in the world around them on
observation, without testing their ideas to see if they were true. One ancient belief was that simple living
organisms could come into being by spontaneous generation. This idea suggests that non-living objects can
give rise to living organisms).
Examples
Ask question
Do background research
Report result
To help you understand what is happening at each stage of the scientific method, an example using the growth
of a tomato seed is detailed below.
1. Ask question
Something catches our imagination.