Overview

Basic of Natural Science

Tony K. Hariadi
Today’s Lecture
• Course overview
• What is science?
• Science and truth
• Math in Nature
• Science and Beauty
• The Big Ideas
Why are you here?

• Science is important.
– Significant human intellectual
achievement
– Deals with fundamental questions
– Provides answers
– Leads to technology
– Solves problems
– Social issues center around science
Scientific Social Issues
• Extermination of species
• Organ transplants
• Cloning
• Nuclear power and weapons
• Overpopulation
• Use of outer space
• Global warming
• Ozone depletion
What is the course all about?
The “story of stuff”

What is the Universe like?

What is our place in the cosmos?
What is our origin?
How did the Universe evolve?
What is Science?
“Science is the marriage of
skepticism and wonder.”

Carl Sagan
 Science is a method
• Hypothesis—create beautiful theories to explain and
unify natural phenomena
• Prediction—apply theory to new regime
• Experiment—use objective observations of Nature to
decide the truth
The Scientific Method
 The Faith behind Science

• The Universe is built on a foundation of

order.
• The Universe is explicable.
• The Universe is mathematical.
• Nature operates with a few simple
laws.
• These laws have the same rules
everywhere.
Science and truth
Science provides a quantitative
description of Nature.
Science is only as good as its
predictions!
Can only describe reality within the
limits of the human mind.
Even the best theories may not be
(completely) true!
Science may never arrive at truth.
And yet…
Some ideas work so well they seem
indistinguishable from truth:
– Atoms
– Gravity
Why does it work?
• Empiricism: go to Nature for answers
• Reject bad theories.

“The great tragedy of Nature is the

murder of beautiful theories by ugly
fact.” Mark Twain
Is the Universe mathematical?
“It is Nature herself, and not the
mathematician, who brings mathematics
into natural philosophy.”

Kant
Math in Nature
• Does math form the fundamental
basis for everything?
• Math revealed in nature
– LAWS
– FORMS
Crystals
Ice: hexagonal symmetry
Symmetry
In mathematics, “symmetry’’
refers to an operation that leaves
an object unchanged.
Reflect through
a mirror

Rotate by 90o
Ice

Edwar
d
Westo
What about life?
• Many creatures have mathematical
shapes
• Many creatures exhibit symmetries
– Bilateral
– Rotational
Mathematical Forms in Life

Equiangular
Spiral
θ /θ 0
R = R 0e
 Edward Weston
The Chambered Nautilus
Nautilus Shell

A perfect
logarithm
ic spiral!
More Equiangular Spirals
More spirals
Bilateral Symmetry
Bilaterally Symmetric Life
Bilaterally Symmetric Life

Edward Weston
Bilaterally Symmetric Life

Edward
Weston
Bilaterally Symmetric Life

Edward
Weston
Rotational Symmetry
Rotationally Symmetric Life
Rotationally Symmetric Life
Rotationally Symmetric Life
Rotationally Symmetric Life
Rotationally Symmetric Life
Mushroom Gills
Mushrooms
Gill
spacing
never
too large
Fractals in nature
• Fractals are objects that look the
same regardless of the magnification.
• “Scale-invariant”
Fractals

River
drainage
More fractals
More fractals
More fractals
Fractal Life
Fractal Life
Fractal Life
Fractal Life
Fractal Life
Examples of fractals in
nature
• Trees
• Lungs
• Viscous fingers (fluid flow)
• Rain clouds
• Electrical discharges
• Shorelines
Fractals in music:
Music is pink
noise
Amplitude

White noise
A∼ f
Pink noise
A∼ f-1
Brown noise
Frequency A∼ f-2
Mathematics is
relevant
It is everywhere, and part of
everything, both inanimate and
animate.
Science and Beauty
“It is more important to have beauty in one’s
equations than to have them fit
experiments.”

Paul Dirac
Can mathematics be beautiful?
Can science be beautiful?
 Beauty
“There is no excellent beauty that hath
not some strangeness in its proportion.”
Bacon

“Beauty is the proper conformity of the

parts to one another and to the whole.”
Heisenberg
Is science beautiful?
Aesthetics play a major role in science
•
Theories are advanced on the basis of their beauty
•
Symmetry
•
Simplicity
•
Beautiful theories
• Strangeness: unexpected
patterns, unexpected connections
• Conformity: unity, symmetry
Ugly theory
• Ptolemy’s model: clunky, complex,
cumbersome
• Circles upon circles upon circles
• Variable speeds
• Off center
• Forced explanation of motions: new
motion-> new addition to theory
Beautiful theory: Newton’s
gravity
Two simple equations:
F=ma motion
F=GMm/r2 gravity

Leads to beautiful elliptical orbits

Explains all celestial motions
Unifies gravity on earth and sky
Beautiful theory:
Einstein’s General Relativity

G µ ν = 8π Tµ ν
Matter tells spacetime how
to curve, and curved space
tells matter how to move.
General Relativity
• Unifies properties of space and time with
properties of matter and motion.
• Previously thought to be entirely
separate.

• Shows delightful, and utterly unexpected,

connections with thermodynamics and
electromagnetism
 More unexpected patterns
Reflected
electromagneti
Reflected
gravity
Reflecte
c wave wave d waves
have
exactly
same
Black hole Black holeenergy
Incomin
Incoming
g gravity
electromagnet
wave
ic wave
Science and beauty
• Why does aesthetics play such an important
role in science?
• Perhaps our notions of “beauty” reflect a
concordance with the underlying mathematical
structure of Nature.

“Beauty is truth
truth beauty-that is all
Ye know on earth
and all ye need to know” (Keats)
The Big Ideas
1. Empiricism
Objective observation
(experimentation) decides what
is true
The Big Ideas
2. Universal Laws
Terrestrial laws and celestial laws are identical
The same simple forces are at work in the sun and
on other planets
The Big Ideas
3. Gravity
Every bit of matter in the Universe
attracts every other bit of matter
A very simple law explains all the
motions observed in the solar system.
The predictions from this simple law are
astonishingly accurate
The Big Ideas
4. Wave-Particle Duality
The microscopic world is different.
Matter sometimes acts like
particles, sometimes like waves.
Light sometimes acts like particles,
sometimes like waves.
At its root, reality exists as waves
of chance.
The Big Ideas
5. The Big Bang
The Universe began from a very
hot, very dense state about 14
billion years ago.
The Universe continues to expand
and evolve.
The Big Ideas
6. We are stardust
All the elements heavier than
hydrogen formed inside of stars.
These stars exploded and sprayed
these elements out into space.
The elements in our bodies (such as
carbon and oxygen) ultimately
originated in the centers of stars.
The Big Ideas
7. The origin of the solar system
Stars and planets are continuously
forming.
The sun and its planets formed about
4.5 billion years ago from an
interstellar cloud of gas and dust.
The earth and the other planets
formed at the same time in a
gaseous disk surrounding the young
sun.
The Big Ideas
8. Plate tectonics
The surface of the earth consist of moving
plates.
Motions of these plates are responsible for
forming new ocean crust, mountain
ranges, earthquakes, and volcanoes.
The Big Ideas
9. The earth is ordinary
Mankind inhabits an ordinary planet,
orbiting an ordinary star, in the
backwaters of an ordinary Galaxy
Our place in the Universe is NOT special
Life may well exist elsewhere