Author Description

Idealized Science presents an alternative to typical classroom instruction where the teacher didactically espouses facts and figures, and instead teaches the classroom community how to wrestle Nature's secrets from her. Doing so requires dialogic discourse based on empirical evidence gained through the implementation of well-thought-out experiments. While easily accomplished in theoretical terms, making meaning from data is not always straight forward, for acquiring quality data is often an arduous task that is filled with potential sources of confounding errors. Learning how to navigate such work is essential to developing a scientific mind. It is also, unfortunately, exceedingly rare to receive such training at any educational level. This book follows a group of learners as they traverse the trials and tribulations of becoming young scientists. Their journey helps to illustrate the types of acts that are necessary to confront confusing and seemingly endless nitty-gritty issues that arise when working in unknown territory. Their task is to create meaning accurately, honestly, and objectively. Their primary tools include a social one, that of dialogue, as well as a physical one, measurements taken from the wild. Along the students' journey, they encounter canonical topics that underpin the physics that serves as the scaffolding for all other sciences, including the convergence of mathematics and technology that provide firm bedrock to abstract and theoretical ideas. Most importantly, the experiences illustrate how science, ideally, is practiced.