Why do I say Science is Easy?

Science is not a collection of facts, equations and definitions. It is not. It may seem that way based on your (and my) experience in the classroom.

Science actually is a method for finding things out. It's as simple as making a statement of presumed fact, then testing that statement until it is proven false. Statements that are not disproven are added to, built upon, and expanded. In practical terms, such statements that are verified by experiment and observation become "facts." Extremely reliable facts.

Gaining an understanding of the physical world means discovering these facts for ourselves and convincing ourselves of their validity. As professionals, we know that there is no way to actually teach somebody something. The best we can hope for is to lead someone to a place where they can discover it for themselves. Only then does the change in thinking and the change in behavior occur which is known as "learning."

Here's the bit I'm prepared now to prove to you: Physics is no more difficult than accounting or bookkeeping. In bookkeeping one must be aware of the various ways money can come in and go out of an organization. Also, there are various ways money can become stuck or stored within an organization, such as in bank accounts, assets and so on. There are also various ways for negative amounts to become stored, such as liabilities, debts, entitlements, and so on. Once the bookkeeper is aware of these, it's a simple matter of adding and subtracting the various amounts to find out where we're at.

Physics is primarily the study of energy, and is no more complicated than bookkeeping. There are various ways for energy to enter and leave a system, or become trapped and stored within a system. Once we can picture this in our minds, it's a simple matter of adding and subtracting the debits, credits, the assets and the liabilities to see where we're at.

The universe has proven to us time after time that energy is never created or destroyed; only transformed from one form to another. But what exactly is this mysterious substance? Not mysterious at all, actually.

Energy is simply this: matter in motion. Anytime there is matter and it is moving, that's energy. As many different forms of matter and as many different kinds of motion there are, that's how many different forms energy can take. But it is nearly always convertible from one form to any other form, following this one rule. The transformation must occur through an actual, testable and observable "mechanism" or logical process.

Energy also responds to the three basic forces of nature: Electromagnetism, Gravity, and Nucleic "sticky" force. I'll explain that last one in a subsequent post.

How this works is fairly simple, too. Suppose an object moves away from the earth in spite of Gravity encouraging it otherwise. When that happens, energy is claimed and becomes locked up or stored. Throw something into the air and it slows until it stops completely, even if only briefly. Then when something moves where Gravity is encouraging it to, energy is liberated. A falling object picks up speed as it falls. The influence of electrical and magnetic forces operates in a similar manner.

All we have to know about energy is that it only transforms, it never vanishes.

Next: An overview of some of the kinds of energy we encounter.