I thought I knew what science was. I had gone to science camps and learned about the protons, neutrons, electrons, and the periodic table in middle school. In high school, I memorized the difference between carbonate and the other carbon ions, what makes a strong acid or base, and the cell cycle. I did a frog dissection in biology class and discovered the different wavelengths of light in chemistry lab. I had always found science interesting and easy to understand.
However, I did not truly understand what a scientist does.
In 11th grade, I took AP Physics 1. My first assignment was 15 problems kinematics for homework. This was my first experience learning how to think like a scientist. I spent 3 hours doing the 15 questions. This was the first time I struggled with a science assignment. I was forced to understand all elements of problem. The vectors of acceleration, the uses for the different formulas, labeling the angles properly, and the list goes on. I struggled to do each one of them and I didn’t know if any of them were correct. The next day in class, I discussed the homework, but none of my classmates were able to fully understand or complete the problem set. We spent the class period putting our brains together to solve all the problems so that all of us had complete knowledge and understanding.
Later that week, we had our first lab experiment. I expected a packet of steps to complete outlining the steps necessary to collect the data, but this was not the case. Instead, I was given a problem a problem to experimentally solve: What was the acceleration due to gravity? I had no clue where to start. I was surrounded by a room filled with equipment, but no clue how to even start to solve this problem. My lab group and I thought of many ideas: Video recording, rolling a ball off a table, and even using a stopwatch to time the ball. Eventually, we came up with a solution. We connected a motion sensor and measured the velocity as a function of time and took the average change over the time a basketball was falling.
When I turned in the lab and completely understood the homework, I realized the way I perceived the world had changed. In my social science classes, I used data to complete conclusions rather than simply reading as many articles on the topic and memorize as many events or vocab words as possible. I was first looking at the whole picture rather than simply the in-depth details as compared to being blind to the bigger picture. I started making decisions by widening all possible ways to fully understand the problem before trying to find a solution. In short, I started thinking like a scientist.
I believe that the science education should focus on problem solving and complete understanding rather than memorizing. In memorizing and doing “cookie cutter” problems in previous science classes, I learned very little on how to problem solve or how to critically think. If everyone was able to think like a scientist, critically think and problem solve like a scientist and applied it to their understanding of the world around them, political discourse would be respectful with facts being the primary common ground between all people. In all, if people were able to think like scientists, critical thinking would be the normal, not the exception.