Questions and Answers

How does a scientist work?

Scientists are interested in the world around us. We take special notice of things we are curious about, and try to understand how they work. We begin by analyzing them. This means we break up any problem we wish to solve into a larger number of smaller problems. In other words, we break up a puzzle into small pieces. Then we try to solve each of the smaller problems, and use these solutions to see if we can put the whole puzzle together. To solve pieces of a puzzle, we use tools which help us. These tools help us measure things and are called quantitative. We can use a ruler to tell us how long something is. We use a scale to see how much something weighs. Each of these measurements help us to understand the pieces of the puzzle. Sometimes we use a computer to put the pieces together to solve the original problem.

Author:

Elton Smith, Staff Scientist