Understanding science stuff

[LOLseph Stalin]

You can't know everything about every field of science; that'd be impossible so I would recommend just sticking with one or two scientific fields that interest you. Even if it's just specific topics within those fields it's fine. I have a particular interest in genetics and diseases and such so I just stick to those while usually ignoring everything else.

Anyway, I hope I was of some help.

[Franz Fanonipants]

science without context leads you into becoming a scientism practitioner like communitybeliever

check out changes in the land as it gives you science within a useful context. then check out bill mckibben's the end of nature.

both of which are good without being just science facts in a vacuum, both of which taught me more about science than any of my schooling.

[ColonelCossack]

Bill Nye

Please no!!!

They show us one of his shows every other physics/chemistry/biology lesson I have. It just makes me want to die.

I do agree with you, though, that there are many good popularisers off science, which is quite a good thing to do. Science is very interesting.

[Decommissioner]

Also you might want to consider doing, and not just learning, about science. For example, you can purchase a telescope and see what constellations you can identify - even cooler is looking at Saturn and Jupiter. Watching how Jupiter's moons orbit around and predicting where they'll be a month from now is pretty neat.

This is a good recommendation. Even with a low powered telescope, you'll be amazed when you gaze at jupiter and see with your own eyes the four galilean moons surrounding it.

If you have a yearning for knowledge your knowledge will grow with time. No need to feel rushed about understanding some of the more complex stuff, it will come naturally to you so long as you stay interested. Like others say, if you really want to get your hands dirty and participate with whatever field interests you, you'll have to be more studious and vigilant to understand and further the science yourself.

[#FF0000]

Please no!!!

They show us one of his shows every other physics/chemistry/biology lesson I have. It just makes me want to die.

I do agree with you, though, that there are many good popularisers off science, which is quite a good thing to do. Science is very interesting.

If anyone thinks they're too cool for Bill Fucking Nye they are wrong.

[NGNM85]

You're problem probably has less to do with the 'science stuff' and more to do with the presentation. People with poor communication skills can make even the most fascinating subjects tedious. Also; not all scientists are great communicators, these are two different skill sets. (However; almost invariably, the most revered scientists are those who are both great scientists, and great comunicators. Check out Michio Kaku, Carl Sagan, or Stephen Hawking.

[Elysian]

Thanks, everyone. Helped me a lot.

Can someone give me links to videos/free online books to understand evolution? Or some author who can make Darwin understandable/readable to the average guy....

[Franz Fanonipants]

pls don't check out sagan he is total wasteoid ass and a science popularizer.

[Drosophila]

Ignore this idiocy.

pls don't check out sagan he is total wasteoid ass and a science popularizer.

Thanks, everyone. Helped me a lot.

Can someone give me links to videos/free online books to understand evolution? Or some author who can make Darwin understandable/readable to the average guy....

What is it you want to know about evolution? Just the general idea/concept behind it? If that's the case, I think I can tell you:

Evolution is basically the process by which one species changes into another. This happens because of natural selection, or "nature's" way of picking what is most likely to survive. If you put a group of rodents on an island covered in trees, there would be a chance for them to adapt to that environment over millions of years. This happens because of mutations in DNA. There's good videos that explain it better than I can. I'll link you to them if I can find them.

[Revolution starts with U]

pls don't check out sagan he is total wasteoid ass and a science popularizer.

And Mr Rogers too!

No, but dinosaurs totally would've built rocket ships if that pesky Chixilub hadn't come along.

[eric922]

Just a few recommendations. Stephen Hawking used to be host a show called 'Into the Universe" that was pretty good and Morgan Freeman hosts a show on the Science Channel called "Through the Wormhole." I enjoyed both of those, I don't know if they are still on though.

[Revolution starts with U]

Ignore this idiocy.






What is it you want to know about evolution? Just the general idea/concept behind it? If that's the case, I think I can tell you:

Evolution is basically the process by which one species changes into another. This happens because of natural selection, or "nature's" way of picking what is most likely to survive. If you put a group of rodents on an island covered in trees, there would be a chance for them to adapt to that environment over millions of years. This happens because of mutations in DNA. There's good videos that explain it better than I can. I'll link you to them if I can find them.

To elucidate your example; it's not that nature chooses. It's that those that live to have offspring... live to have offspring. The ones who have the most offspring eventually come to be the premier iteration of the species. If you put a bunch of rodents in a jungle island environment they will continue to search the floor for nuts and discarded foods, as they do. Now if one gets a mutation that allows it to glide a little out of the trees, and this helps it survive and have children, given a long period of time the population of gliding rodents will grow. If something now happens to jungle floor making it not evolutionarily convenient for "regular" rodents, newcomers to this island will just see an island full of gliding rodents.

There is also sexual selection and social selection, but these are more subsets of natural selection, than actual means of selection themselves. Big feathers on a peacock gets him more mates, being a dominant male tends to get more mates in monkey troops (tho there is a lot of "adultery" going on, and the alpha isn't quite the progenator I'm sure he imagines himself to be).

Recently a lady came up with the idea of symbiotic biogenesis to explain many mutations. It says that microbes and bacteria inside species cause many of the complex evolutions in the world. It is the bacteria that needs these mutations, and will recode the dna for it, as opposed to the species itself. I really like this theory... of course even it is still subject to natural selection.

[Zealot]

Darwin starts his book by basically giving an overview of how artificial selection works. Artificial selection is not up for debate, dog breeders, horse breeders etc. are always breeding animals in a directed manner to produce some quality they desire e.g. faster horses or shorter dogs. In fact, French Bulldogs have been domesticated so much that they physically cannot breed naturally anymore and most require artificial insemination.

From here he lays out his idea of natural selection which is basically artificial selection done naturally. We are always producing variation and mutations, sometimes beneficial, sometimes neutral and sometimes straight out bad. The bad ones would, of course, have died out because they would be less competitive and thus have less of a chance of surviving whereas beneficial mutations increase the individual's chances of survival, enabling him to spread his genes. A good example of today is that in Africa a mutation has emerged in some people that has effectively made them resistant to AIDs. Neutral mutations can sometimes become bad or good, an example would be the peppered moths mentioned in one of the videos I linked. The moths with a darker coat had a better chance of survival during the industrial revolution because it effectively became a type of "camouflage" for them amongst the soot whereas before it might not have mattered all that much.

There is a lot more than this involved and I don't want you to go thinking that I've covered evolution by natural selection in a couple of paragraphs. I haven't even scratched the surface and no doubt I probably made a mistake somewhere. It's a very basic and eloquent mechanism that is actually quite easy to understand and which has been observed many times both in the lab and in the wild. This mass accumulation of small changes eventually creates what would seem huge changes. But if the whole history of evolutionary forms were to be drawn on paper we wouldn't notice much difference from one form to the next. However, comparing forms that are thousands of years apart we would definitely see it. Richard Dawkins once called it "The Blind Watchmaker."

[#FF0000]

Thanks, everyone. Helped me a lot.

Can someone give me links to videos/free online books to understand evolution? Or some author who can make Darwin understandable/readable to the average guy....

I know there's this 8 HOUR epic of a documentary (split up into 7 parts -- so you can watch whatever parts might interest you separately from the whole thing) from PBS called "Evolution: A Journey Into Where We’re From and Where We’re Going" that might be something like what you're looking for, if you can find it now.

[Franz Fanonipants]

Ignore this idiocy.

you morons do know that actual scientist contemporaries of Sagan hated him right?

not because of his fame, but because they were rightly worried that his popularization work actually gave people the wrong ideas about cosmology etc.

[Revolution starts with U]

1 or 2 crotchety old scrooges didn't like Sagan. For the most part he was a well respected member of the field of biology.

[ColonelCossack]

If anyone thinks they're too cool for Bill Fucking Nye they are wrong.

I'm not too cool* for Bill Nye; I just find him incredible annoying.

It's not his fault; it's that my school used to show me his stuff too much, so I went off it. Too much of a good thing, you know?


*In fact I'm probably the least cool person ever. I'm a super nerd. Just look at my tendency!

[Genghis]

I just finished a book on medieval science - The Genesis of Science by James Hannam. Good read.

[NGNM85]

Thanks, everyone. Helped me a lot.

Can someone give me links to videos/free online books to understand evolution? Or some author who can make Darwin understandable/readable to the average guy....

Check out Richard Dawkins'; Greatest Show On Earth, it should be availible at your local library.

[ÑóẊîöʼn]

you morons do know that actual scientist contemporaries of Sagan hated him right?

not because of his fame, but because they were rightly worried that his popularization work actually gave people the wrong ideas about cosmology etc.

Perhaps you could furnish us with some examples so we can avoid those pitfalls when later encountering Sagan's work? Because this is the first I've heard of it and it seems dubious that successive popularisers would miss such a teaching opportunity...