Wednesday 16 October 2013

The Scientist and the Egg.


            Science is one of humanity's greatest inventions. When most people talk about science, however they mean technology, industry, business or academia. While many of these things use science and its products, they are not in themselves science.

            Science is, in fact, a mechanism for finding the most likely correct answer, based on the data available. The cornerstones of science are observation and experimentation, with contributions from other things such as reasoning and logic.
            The other day a colleague of mine posed a question to a class of students:- “When you cook an egg, why doesn’t it always turn out the same way?” A simple question, but it was gratifying to see the whole class puzzling over this. If boiling an egg is a simple task, why can the result be so variable. One answer is that apparently simple thing often involve more variables than you have considered. What are the variables for cooking an egg or any other job you attempt? A thought I will leave you with for today.