 Hi, I found my pen. I was just looking for it. So today we're going to talk about the process of science. We're in a science course. We're going to be studying biology, the science of life for the rest of this semester. So it makes sense that we better have a decent understanding of the process of science so that we can understand how the process of science applies to studying living critters. And then we get to learn all these really cool fun things about critters for the rest of the semester. Before we start, we should probably have a definition of the process of science. Like, what is science? Really? I mean, it's one of those things. I don't know why we start the class with all these definitions that I feel like, oh, that's like really philosophical. Like, what is it? We'll have a definition for you. Science is a process by which we attempt to understand how the natural world works. And there are a few key words in here that I want to highlight just so that you're focused in on the significant pieces. First of all, I keep emphasizing this. It's a process. It's not a linear process. I'm going to show you a visual in a second that illustrates how, no, it actually is kind of completely not linear and is very rare if it ever is linear, but it's iterative, it's creative, and it's web-like. It's a web-like, iterative, creative process by which we attempt to understand. Like, the goal is understanding what the natural world, how the natural world works. So inside that definition, we actually have some exclusion. There are some things that we can't use the process of science to explore because we have to be exploring the natural world, and if we're not, then we're actually not using the process of science. So let me show you this visual of how, you know, we tend to think, okay, science is the scientific method. So first you do this, and then you do this, and then you do this, and then you do this, and then you're done. And that is completely not how science works. Although the scientific method and the steps of collecting data through the process of experimentation, that's kind of central to the process of science. And you can see that, yeah, that's kind of in the middle that we are gathering data and we're interpreting the data. This alone is a pretty iterative process because interpreting the data often leads to further gathering of more data that needs to be interpreted that then leads to gathering more and so on and so forth. But that little central piece where we probably could put the scientific method inside there somewhere, that little central piece, there are other factors that feed into that and that receive what input from the experimental aspect. And this includes like simple exploration and discovery, like simply going for a walk and making observations or reading something or asking questions of somebody who's doing the science in the area that you're interested in. I love this because notice that there's actually even a part of the process of science that is random and lucky, serendipitous and like you randomly come across an observation that kind of strikes a chord and makes you think, oh, this would be an interesting thing to explore. There's a huge role in science for community. There's communication, your science, your process doesn't just sit inside a little box and you know, you go through your little experiment and then that's the end of the story. You actually put your information out into the world, you put your experiment out into the world and you ask for feedback from the rest of the scientific community and then the feedback that you receive from there will inform whether you go forward back into the testing process, whether you actually come back and do some more exploration and discovery or it actually can feedback into benefits of the process. Like we can actually get things out of the process that we look at and go, oh, cha-ching, like that's awesome. We're really excited about that piece of it. Oh, our course, we're going to have opportunities to do science. We're going to, in our process of doing science, in order to understand doing science, we need to have a grip on this center green bubble which involves designing a quality experiment. So we're going to take a look at experimental design in the next section.