Unit 3 The scientific method 科研方法.docVIP

Unit 3 The scientific method 科研方法 Every scientist dreams of lighting up some dark corner of the natural world — or, almost as good, of finding a dark corner where none had been suspected. The most careful observations, the most \o adj.worked out with much care and in great detail; carefully prepared and finished; complicated 精心做成的；细心完成的；复杂的 elaborate calculations will not be fruitful unless the right questions are asked. Here is where creative imagination enters science, which is why some of the greatest scientific advances have been made by young, \o adj.(of the mind)sharp; quick to understand 敏锐的；聪明的 nimble minds. 每一位科学家都渴望探明自然界未知领域的客观规律；或者说每一位科学家都渴望找到一处前人尚未耕耘过的研究园地。在科学研究中，如果不能提出恰当的问题，再细致的观察和周密的计算，也不会有什么成果。这是一个有创造性想象力的科学领域，这就是为什么一些最伟大的科学进步是由敏锐的年轻人做出的。 Scientists study nature in a variety of ways. Some approaches are quite direct: a geologist takes a rock sample to a laboratory and, by inspection and analysis, finds out what it is made of and how and when it was probably formed. Other approaches are indirect: nobody has ever visited the center of the earth or ever will, but by combining a lot of thought with clues from different sources, a geologist can say with near certainty that the earth has a core of molten iron. No matter what the approaches to particular problems may be, however, the work scientists do always fits into a certain pattern of steps. This pattern, a general scheme for looking at the universe, has become known as the scientific method. 科学家以各种方式研究自然。一些方法是非常直接的: 地质学家把一个岩石样本带到实验室,通过检验和分析,发现它的构造是什么样的、它可能是如何形成、何时形成的。其他方法是间接的:迄今为止，尚未有人访问过地球中心，将来也不会有，但是通过综合分析以及从各种途径得来的数据，一位地理学家几乎可以肯定地说地球核是由熔铁组成的。然而,不管科学家们可能用什么方法解决特定的问题，他们的工作总是遵从一定的模式进行着。用一个普遍的解决方法来研究宇宙,这种模式,被称为科研方法。 We can think of the scientific method in terms of four steps: (1) formulating a problem, (2) observation and experiment, (3) interpreting the data, and (4) testing the interpretation by further observation and experiment. Examining the natural world is at the heart of the scientific me