trying the SB "question of the week"
May. 20th, 2006 10:08 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
acroyearover at ScienceBlogs, Seed (the corporate sponsor) gives the team a question to spur the thought processes (like these guys need any help ;-) ). Well, this week is one I'd like to answer...
"If you could shake the public and make them understand one scientific idea, what would it be?"
My answer is quite simple: "Common Sense" is wrong when it comes to scientific facts and theories. Nothing in science is obvious, or we wouldn't need science if the first place.
Gravity as "32 feet per second" is obvious (though it took quite a while to confirm it). However, Gravity as a *mutual* attraction, implying that you are pulling the earth with exactly the same force tha the earth is pulling you with (and merely the fact that its more massive is why it accelerates far less than you do), THAT is not obvious, and nothing about it could be in any way something anybody with "common sense" would ever come up with.
The idea that as you move, relative to something else, your clock (time itself) moves differently utterly violates any idea of "common sense", but our entire GPS satellite system is accurate to within 30 feet because of that essential scientific truth.
Even when you know "most" of the properties of an atom, it can fool you. If the inert gases are supposed to be essentially "complete", meaning they don't form other molecules, then why is Radon such a dangerous gas when it seeps into your home, potentially giving you cancer? What does it react to, because such a reaction *seems* to violate all common sense!
You can "think" about something forever, using "common sense" or otherwise, and you might even be right, but the truth is that reality is what matters, not thought. If you don't actually test it against the reality of the world as it is, the thought is meaningless. Nature has plenty more facts out there that will continue to violate "common sense", in the very small, the very big, and the very complex.
To convince yourself that any other part of science, be it geology, astronomy, chemistry, physics, and of course, biology, should simply be a matter of "common sense" is to deceive yourself. Scientists discover the facts they find and develop the theories they develop by using very uncommon sense.
Would that it were more common than it is...
"If you could shake the public and make them understand one scientific idea, what would it be?"
My answer is quite simple: "Common Sense" is wrong when it comes to scientific facts and theories. Nothing in science is obvious, or we wouldn't need science if the first place.
Gravity as "32 feet per second" is obvious (though it took quite a while to confirm it). However, Gravity as a *mutual* attraction, implying that you are pulling the earth with exactly the same force tha the earth is pulling you with (and merely the fact that its more massive is why it accelerates far less than you do), THAT is not obvious, and nothing about it could be in any way something anybody with "common sense" would ever come up with.
The idea that as you move, relative to something else, your clock (time itself) moves differently utterly violates any idea of "common sense", but our entire GPS satellite system is accurate to within 30 feet because of that essential scientific truth.
Even when you know "most" of the properties of an atom, it can fool you. If the inert gases are supposed to be essentially "complete", meaning they don't form other molecules, then why is Radon such a dangerous gas when it seeps into your home, potentially giving you cancer? What does it react to, because such a reaction *seems* to violate all common sense!
You can "think" about something forever, using "common sense" or otherwise, and you might even be right, but the truth is that reality is what matters, not thought. If you don't actually test it against the reality of the world as it is, the thought is meaningless. Nature has plenty more facts out there that will continue to violate "common sense", in the very small, the very big, and the very complex.
To convince yourself that any other part of science, be it geology, astronomy, chemistry, physics, and of course, biology, should simply be a matter of "common sense" is to deceive yourself. Scientists discover the facts they find and develop the theories they develop by using very uncommon sense.
Would that it were more common than it is...
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no subject
Date: 2006-05-21 04:43 pm (UTC)and no, I didn't know why it was dangerous (which is why i mentioned it). so its not an electron problem, its a neutron problem. go fig. of course, there's much about neutron flow we don't totally understand either... ;-)
thanks
no subject
Date: 2006-05-21 06:02 pm (UTC)Not only does radon decompose rather quickly, but it chain-decomposes until it gets to a radioactive form of lead (which decomposes fairly slowly by comparison). Within about 3 weeks, all radon currently hiding in your house will undergo multiple steps, yielding 3 or 4 alphas, 2 or 3 betas, and 2 or 3 gammas, until getting to the radioactive lead isotope.
More on radon: clicky