Science & Scientists

What is science and who are scientists?

Science is a way of organizing what we already know and learning more by experiments.

Scientists use the scientific method to learn about the world.

There are a lot of different branches of science. Here are a few of the more common sciences:

• anthropology is the study of humans
• astronomy is the study of stars, planets, moons, and everything in space
• biochemistry - if you combine biology and chemistry, you get biochemistry - the chemistry of living things
• biology is the study of living things
• botany is the study of plants
• chemistry is the study of the elements (like carbon) and their compounds (like carbon dioxide)
• geology is the study of rocks and the earth
• meteorology is the study of the weather
• pathology is the study of examining body tissues to diagnose health proglems
• physics is the study of energy - light, sound, heat, electricity, and motion
• toxicology is the study of how chemicals hurt living things
• zoology is the study of animals

The different kinds of scientists are named for what they study. Biologists study biology. Zoologists study animals. So there are botanists, chemists, geologists, astronomers, and many more!

Science is all about getting answers to questions -

• What?
• When?
• Where?
• Who?
• Why?
   

Scientists are curious - they want to know the answers. Then they want to share what they learn.

What kind of scientist do you think you might like to be? Think about what interests you - is it volcanos? Then maybe you’d like to be a vulcanologist, a special kind of geologist. Is it grasshoppers and wasps? Then entomology is for you - that’s the study of insects. There’s more than a whole world of science, since you might even study things far beyond our earth, and be an astronomer.

Do you want to see what some of the scientists at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences do? They are so excited about their work that they developed their own video to show young people like you what they do and how it can help keep us all healthy.

Sad Lungs

Watch Who Made the Lungs Sad?

Are you excited about science like our researchers are? If so, maybe you want to develop a video like they did, or draw a picture, or write a story about something you are learning in science that you want to share with others. Send it to us. It might end up on this web page some day for others to see. We all can learn from one another. Send your work to us at webcenter@niehs.nih.gov.