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What Science Is and How it Works

Study Questions ­ Section 1

 

1. What pattern did Dmitri Mendeleev discover about elements and how did he observe this pattern? In other words, how did this pattern ever come to his attention?
   
2. Who was Alfred Wegener and what idea did he propose?
3. Was his idea accepted by the scientific community?
4. Why?
5. What does the scientific community think of his idea today and why?
   
6. Pick two (of the three) case studies described in chapter 3 and briefly explain how they illustrate the use of instruments in the advancement of science.
   
7. Briefly describe how argon gas, the barometer, and Neptune were discovered.
8. Which of these three discoveries was completely dependent upon mathematics?
   
9. Briefly describe the role each of the following people played in the discovery of the planets motions: Plato, Ptolemy, Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, and Newton.