Most of us know science can be fun, and there is an immense sense of achievement when we finally grasp a tricky concept. But our experiences from school days may keep us from trying, and we switch off our brains the moment things get too technical. School’s finished, and there’s no need to struggle with this stuff anymore, right?
When we leave school, we can indeed leave behind a lot of stuff we learned. We can go day after day, week after week without needing to remember the names of the presidents or the world’s tallest mountains or longest rivers. We may never need to speak Spanish or Chinese in our life again, and if our command of written English goes downhill somewhat, it probably goes unnoticed by most. Science is different though. Science is everywhere. It muscles in our day-to-day life whether we want it or not. From understanding how our body works to figuring out how best to heat our home, it’s all about scientific principles, and we have everything to gain and nothing to lose from familiarizing or re-familiarizing ourselves with a bit of science.
Here, we are going to explore some of the concepts which are difficult, but every care has been taken to explain stuff in straightforward language. Wherever possible, diagrams and real world examples are added to help make things more understandable.
If the sciences didn’t work the way they do, we wouldn’t be here, and being able to understand how science works is one of the best things about being human.