Physical science
From Wikinfo
Physical science is used to describe the union for the natural science and non-living system science, separate of the biological sciences. Note, the "physical" distinction of the science does not discount the study of biological phenomena.
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Meaning of science summarized
Summarizing the meaning of science, we may say that it is "knowledge so classified and organized that it may be used in acquiring other knowledge "; that it implies not only content or subject matter classified and organized, but also a method of investigation or problem solving, including observation and measurement, experimentation, and logical inference, both inductive and deductive, by means of which the subject matter is organized and used in prediction, discovery, and invention; that its subject matter is constantly growing in volume and being brought under simpler and more comprehensive forms of description; that all human experience is legitimate material for its investigation; that it grows out of the problems related to human needs, physical, industrial, social, emotional, and intellectual; and that it is so intimately connected with industrial development that neither can go on without the other.
Division of the field
The vastness of the domain with which science is concerned has made it necessary for individual workers in the various parts of the field to become specialists, and so to deal mainly with limited groups of phenomena, the members of which are more obviously and simply related one to another than they are to the members of the other groups.[1]
A group called the physical sciences is closely related to the mathematical science group, because in the study of them much use is made of the processes of mathematics in reaching conclusions with regard to the materials and phenomena of which they treat. This is possible because these sciences deal not only with such properties of bodies as color, hardness, smoothness, and the like, but much more largely with changes in their sizes, shapes, motions, temperatures, electrical and magnetic conditions, and so on, which can be measured very exactly in terms of such definite and well-known units as the foot or centimeter for length, the cubic foot or cubic centimeter for volume, the pound or gram for mass, the degree centigrade for temperature, the volt for electrical pressure, and others equally definite.[2]
The physical sciences treat not only of such properties of bodies as have just been mentioned, as well as of others that are characteristic of them under various conditions, but especially of the phenomena that occur and the relations that exist when such properties are changed in connection with the action of forces or the transferences of energy from one body to another, or with transformations of energy from one kind, such as that of mechanical motion or that of electricity, into another kind, such as heat or light or chemical separation.[3]
This group includes physics and astronomy, which deal primarily with such interactions and energy changes as occur without altering the composition of the bodies concerned, and chemistry, which deals with interactions among bodies when the transference or transformation of energy are accompanied by the formation (through combination or decomposition, or exchanges of constituents) of substances that are different in their characteristic properties from those that were originally under observation before the energy changes took place.[4]
See also
- General
- aerodynamics, thermodynamics
- Energy
- kinetic energy, potential energy, mechanical energy, thermal energy
- Other
- light, periodic table of elements, simple machines
References
- General information
- Twiss, G. R. (1917). A textbook in the principles of science teaching. New York: Macmillan.
- Adapted from the Wikipedia article, "Physical science" http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physical_science August 3, 2003
- footnotes
