What is This Thing Called Science?
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Bashaer Alkhafaji
EXPS 220
Dr. Luera
What is This Thing Called Science?
Oliver Sacks, a Neurologist in New York and winner of many awards such as the
Hawthorden Prize, Polk Award, and Guggenheim Fellowship, writes a memoir, Uncle
Tungsten: Memories of a chemical Boyhood, of his interest in metals and elements. The
study of chemistry later leads him into the world of biology, and then finally Neurology.
Sacks biography of his science experience in chemistry is very interesting to me. Most
of our memories of science are of things we enjoyed learning about because we
participated in hands on activities. We both got to be the scientist, explore, and find
solutions. Sacks and I experienced science at a young age, however, we have many
differences and similarities.
As a child, Sacks was interested in metal. He loved how they chemically reacted.
He enjoyed observing and touching metal. He thought about metal a lot and always
wondered why they were shiny or, heavy, or why they could bend, but not break, and
many other questions about metal. His mother would get annoyed of his many
questions and ask him to ask his uncle Dave. Similarly, when I was young I used to ask
my family members a lot of questions about how something might work, or why it works
the way it does. My family used to get annoyed of me because my questions never
stopped. They used to call me a chatterbox, and I do not blame them. When I wanted to
find something out, I asked until I reached my answer or continued to search for the
answer the way Sacks did: “I was encouraged from the start to interrogate, to
investigate” (Sacks, 2001, 10).
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We both interacted with science at a young age, but I was first introduced to
science in school, on the other hand, Sacks was introduced to science by his family
members. During Sacks elementary school years, science was not seen as an
important curriculum, therefore, it was not taught:” My school, The Hall, had no science
and hence little interest for me—our curriculum, at this point, was based solely on the
classics” (Sacks, 2001, 57). Luckily, Sacks kept his interest in chemistry alive by going
to the library, science museums, and visiting his uncle Dave. However, I stayed
interested in science because of the hands on activities my teachers assigned. I
remember being excited in six grade about going to class because our teacher always
had a fun activity for us to do hands on. Science class for me was a where I can learn
the lesson as I experiment. In comparison, the laboratory gave Sacks the opportunity
to discover the elements on his own. Sacks wanted to experience everything first hand,
so he made metals from scratch:” I knew from looking at the factory catalog, that one
could buy these metals already purified, but it would be far more fun, far more exciting, I
reckoned, to make them myself” (Sacks, 2001, 69).
During class activities, I was taught to follow the scientific method. We were told
to follow the scientific method step by step. My teachers taught me to always begin with
a question. I had to then make an educated guess to my question. Then I had to make a
procedure, collect data from the experiment, and make a conclusion.
On the other hand, Sacks did not have to follow the scientific method like how I
did; sometimes he just did an experiment to see how it will react. Sacks did begin his
experiment with a question; however, he not did always make a hypothesis. Sometimes
he began his experiments without thinking about how it will react to the added. Also,
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during his experiments he did not record data. He just wanted to visually capture the
chemical change of the elements in his mind. Furthermore, Sacks did his experiments
out of passion, and was not assigned by his teachers. However, the only time I did
science experiments out of class was for my science fair project. That was when I
applied the scientific method on my own and not in class. I communicated my
experiment and the results to my teacher and classmates. Sack communicated his
ideas or experiments with his brothers, uncles, and parents. Sometimes they did
experiments together, and his brothers sometimes suggested doing one experiment
over another.
Moreover, Sacks wanted to become a chemist from the time he was in
elementary school. His parents were very supportive in his interest in chemistry
allowing him to make his own laboratory. His uncle Dave gave him supplies for
conducting his experiments, such as, test tubes, graduated cylinders, funnels, and
many more. This later led him to learn about that Periodic Table. He studied the history
and discoverers of each of the Periodic elements. From how much he looked over the
elements, sacks memorized every element: “ I got to know it so well—visually and
conceptually—that I could mentally trace its paths in every direction, going up a group,
then turning right on a period, stopping, going down one, yet always knowing where I
was” (Sacks, 2001, 194). On the other hand, I did not want to pursue a science career
when I was young. I loved to experiment with things, but I wanted to become a teacher.
In addition, I learned about the periodic table when I was in high school, unlike Sacks
who learned about it early on. Also, I learned the basic facts about the periodic table
and not the history or details of the property of each element.
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I was encouraged by my teachers to question and investigate questions the
same way Sacks’ family did. My teachers assisted me, helped, and guided me through
experiments. For example, during the second grade, my teacher took my classmates
and I outside to plant a seed that later grew into a flower. Every day, we cared for the
flowers by watering them and we collected data by measuring their growth. The teacher
made sure that we did not water the plant too much and made sure that we recorded
the growth of the flower correctly. Because of her guidance, I learned how long it took a
plant to grow and how to care for a plant.
Furthermore, sometimes when I felt I did not understand what the lesson was
about or meant, my teachers always stepped in to explain. For instance, my teacher
made sure that I understood that over watering the plant will drown it. In comparison,
Sacks was also helped by his family. Sacks teacher in chemistry was his uncle. His
uncle showed and taught him about the metals uniqueness, qualities, how they were
discovered and refined, and why they were appropriate metals for making filaments
(Sacks, 2001, 35). In addition, his uncle taught him how to mix metals and weigh them
to see their similarities and differences. His uncle encouraged him to experiment on his
own with the metals. He taught him a lot about the chemical compounds, especially
Tungsten metal. His uncles interest and ideas of chemistry passed onto Sacks : ” Uncle
Dave saw all science as a wholly human, no less than an intellectual and technological,
enterprise, and it seemed natural to me, in my turn, to do the same”(Sacks, 2001, 101).
He guided, helped, and assisted him during his experiments that he did in his factories.
If he had any questions about something, he was encouraged to ask. Sometimes his
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family members did not know the answer to his question(s), and he was encouraged to
find the answer by conducting his own experiments.
Oliver Sacks comes from an educated family. His father, mother, and two older
brothers are medical doctors. His family is financially secured, giving him the
opportunity to spend his allowance on his experiments. Sometimes, his uncle Abe
would give him money for him to buy chemicals from a store nearby. Sacks mind is
always open to new areas of knowledge. He moved from chemistry to biology at a
young age because he became interested in human and animals body parts. Sacks did
not pursue his dream of becoming a chemist because he had pressure from his parents
to become a doctor and he lost interest in chemistry. He knew at the age of fourteen
that he had to follow in his families foot steps to become a doctor. He became a
successful Neurologist where he changed the lives of many.
On the other hand, I did not come from a family of scientist or a rich family that
would allow me to do experiments. In addition, my parents did not put pressure on me
to become a doctor; I was allowed to pursue the career I wanted. Furthermore, I am not
interested in chemistry like how he was at a young age, but I was interested in Biology. I
was interested in the life cycle of plants. I remember observing, touching, smelling,
measuring my mother’s flowers outside in the. In comparison, Sacks also was
interested in gardens as a child, the way I was.
In addition, he and I both engaged in a phase where we just played with the
variables without any guided instruction. During class, my group played with Oobleck by
touching, smelling, and even eating it. We just wanted to know what is was and how it
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reacts to specific actions we applied to it. It was the same case with Sacks and his
metals. He wanted to know how chemicals react when he mixed them. He loved making
chemicals explode or mix together making a weird smell. When he did his experiments
he wanted to “…pulverize them, treat them with acid, roast them—whatever was
necessary—so [he] could extract their metals [himself]” (Sacks, 2001, 69).
Oliver and I both engaged in categorizing things but in different situations. On
one class activity, Professor Luera gave each group a type of food to describe using all
of our five senses. My group got a plant. Each one of us participated in describing how
the plant felt, smelled, tasted, sounded, and looked like. We had to categorize each
qualitative observation and record our data on a white board. As a class, we shared
each other’s ideas and discussed the words that were used to describe what each
group was given. Some words that were used were not the correct term in describing
the type of food. For example, we had a shallot onion and we used the word “strong” to
describe the taste of it. A classmate pointed out that the word “strong” is not the correct
term because a type of food cannot be “strong” when tasting it. The correct term should
have been “pungent” to describe it. Therefore, my group had to fix the mistake on the
white board.
We both used our observational skill to categorize things. For instance, Oliver
was experimenting with chemicals by artificially making scents of fruits and vegetable.
During his experiments, he started to think about how we categorize and recognize
smell. He saw that there was no simple order in categorizing smell. Furthermore, he
questioned how things give out smell, for example, “What gave onions and garlic and
radishes their pungent smell?” (Sacks, 2001, 86). He was amazed of how the nose
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could recognize a smell at an instance: “My interest in smells made me wonder how we
recognized and categorized odors, how the nose could instantly delineate esters from
aldehydes, or recognize a category such as terpenes, as it were, at a glance” (Sack,
2001, 88).
There are three parts of science. One part of science is a process skill. A
process skill is the way we do science. A scientist could observe, measure, experiment,
classify, infer, and etc. The science process skill can be basic or integrated. A second
part of science is that it has a body of knowledge with laws, theories, and facts. A law
describes a set of action(s), on the other hand, a theory confirms an explanation of a
phenomena or observation. For instance, it was believed for many years that the world
was flat until the first exposition to the New World; Christopher Columbus saw that the
Earth was round and communicated to people that the world was round and not flat by
evidence he came up with. A third part of science is that science can be a way of
knowing. Science is based on observations and evidence. Furthermore, it can limit bias.
An example of a way of knowing is how the Earth is round, it has been confirmed
scientifically by satellite images that the Earth is round and not flat since it is circular.
Science could be related to many things, the acceleration of a cars speed or
velocity, density of an heavy object, mathematical equations, how our body develops
and processes, and etc. I know that science can be based on anything, except faith. I
like science because it shows the process of how things develop. Furthermore, science
is always changing. As we progress in technology, new methods of doing things
develop and change how we live our lives. In the past, people’s means of
communication was through mail. Today, we communicate through the internet,
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telephones, text messaging, transportation, etc. With science, we are able find solutions
to things that are not answered or discover something new.
I learned that everyone experienced science differently, and their thoughts and
views may also differ.
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Works Cited
Sacks, Oliver (2001). Uncle Tungsten: Memories of a Chemical Boyhood. New
York