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- The Role of Observation in Science Worksheet
- Melting Regularities and the CRC Worksheet
- Precision Practice Worksheet
- Graphing Histograms
"Creations of Fire" Reading Guide
Observation : pp. 22-24, 75-85, 107-110
When you go through separated "chunks" of text like this, focus on my questions rather than trying to comprehend all the details. Compare/contrast the role of observation among the Greeks (Socrates, Plato, & Aristotle), the early Europeans (the Scholastics and Empiricists), and the "revolutionaries" (Descartes and Francis Bacon).
Roger Bacon PSD: pp. 396-403
When you go through primary documents like this, focus on my questions rather than trying to comprehend all the details. What are the two ways of knowing? Why is experience better than argument? What are "exterior" and "interior" experiences? How does the virtue of an observer affect his/her ability to learn? What's the first great prerogative of experimental science?
"The Periodic Table" Reading Guide
HYDROGEN: pp. 21-28
ZINC: pp. 29-36
IRON: pp. 37-49
Observation Test Review (essay given below)
KNOW DO
KNOW DO TAKE-HOME ESSAY: What is
Priestly's belief on the role of observation in science?
Use the exerpt from his paper to defend your position.
Include a comparison to two other scientists or groups we
have studied.
Of Dephlogisticated Air, and of the Constitution of the
Atmosphere, by Joseph Priestley (1733-1804)

For my own part, I will frankly acknowledge, that, at the commencement of the experiments recited in this section, I was so far from having formed any hypothesis that led to the discoveries I made in pursuing them, that they would have appeared very improbable to me had I been told of them; and when the decisive facts did at length obtrude themselves upon my notice, it was very slowly, and with great hesitation, that I yielded to the evidence of my senses. And yet, when I re-consider the matter, and compare my last discoveries relating to the constitution of the atmosphere with the first, I see the closest and the easiest connexion in the world between them, so as to wonder that I should not have been led immediately from the one to the other. That this was not the case, I attribute to the force of prejudice, which, unknown to ourselves, biasses not only our judgments, properly so called, but even the perceptions of our senses: for we may take a maxim so strongly for granted, that the plainest evidence of sense will not intirely change, and often hardly modify our persuasions; and the more ingenious a man is, the more effectually he is entangled in his errors; his ingenuity only helping him to deceive himself, by evading the force of truth."
from Experiments and Observations on Different Kinds of Air, Volume II, Section III, London, 1775 [from Henry Marshall Leicester and Herbert S. Klickstein, A Source Book in Chemistry 1400-1900 (New York: McGraw Hill, 1952)]