Science

The following essay describes four research projects that I worked on through Zooniverse (https://www.zooniverse.org). In the four projects that I studied, my scientific thinking was challenged in different ways. I was forced to make inferences, test hypothesis and draw conclusions about everything from African desert animals to space comets. This has really changed the way I think about science, because depending on the topic you are studying, there are going to be different skills that you need to use more. For example in one setting you have to make a lot more inferences and use a lot more math than you do when it comes to studying desert animals where you end up doing a lot more drawing of conclusions and you don't do very much math at all. The paragraphs that follow show the different types of scientific thinking I did with each of the projects.

Research Project: Understanding Animal Faces

When studying the animal faces project I learned a lot about classifying animals. When classifying an animal there's a lot you have to do it understand what kind of animal it is, how many animals there are, its habitat and you can also take notes on some of the animals’ mannerisms. Before starting this project I thought that I was going to be doing a lot more reading about how animals are studied, but I actually got to see how animals are studied firsthand and I am able to make a difference in the research of animals. I noticed the animals that need a lot of classifying are even some of our local animals because we try to document how much of that animal species is living in that area or if the population of the animal has gone down or for some species could be leading to extinction.

Research Project: Camera Catalogue

When studying my camera catalog project I was able to do more sorting of animals but I had a broader range of species. In my last project I did a lot of animals that were in Africa in a desert land. In this unit I got to work on animals like deer and other forest creatures from North America. I also got the opportunity to study and read on how some of these animals have similarities and differences and what kind of things they have to do to survive in desert land versus forest. I also classified some animals that were not only land animals but water animals as well. This included animals such as beavers and fisher cats.

Research Project: Snapshots at Sea

For this project, I had to do a lot of work with animals underwater, especially whales. I had to use a different way of thinking to be able to work on this project. It forced me to make a lot of inferences and also do research. It had a lot to do with the anatomy of the whales. I also learned a lot about why it is so important to keep classifying whales. There's so many things about whales that we don't know and even more about the underwater that we don't know. This allows us to further research how whales will survive.

Research Project: Comet Hunters

For this project I was studying comets. When studying comets I learned how important it is to be able to identify where they are moving in space. For many years scientists have been trying to study where comets travel and how fast they travel in order to guess where they might collide or hit us. It has always been a concern on whether or not comets will hit earth, that's why calculating size is also important. There are some comets that can be even larger than the earth or the sun that are traveling through space at very high speeds. This has really pushed my scientific thinking in a more abstract way because there is still a lot of research to be done on comets.

In my comet unit I had to make a lot of inferences because when looking at some of the really small ones that are moving through space it’s hard to find their location or where they will be in in the next 24 hours. Part of the research was to identify distance between comets. Sometimes it would be hard to tell whether it was another star or comet i was measuring to so i had to make an inference.  When studying whales there are a lot of things that you're going to need to know how to do especially when it comes to scientific thinking there are a lot of conclusions that i was able to draw because of the information that I gathered. For example whales are a very social species that does a lot of communication in school of whales. Something that was challenging for me was identifying animals I didn't know. But Zooniverse helped me understand what these animals were and their characteristics by providing small summaries of each animal. I didn't have to end up doing any outside research on these animals which is good because I don't live in a very outdoorsy area. Another challenge that I faced was in the unit around comets, because I had never seen  comets before. When studying comets, there are a lot of fine details you need to pay attention to and there's a lot of math  involved. Especially when trying to locate a comet. For example I had to use my basic distance equation.

Conclusion
In conclusion, these projects have made me a better scientist because of the way I have pushed my thinking. I learned that there are a lot of inferences and conclusions and hypotheses that all need to be drawn and made in order to properly understand what you're researching. I also learned a lot about different topics and either somethings in scientific thinking that relate to all topics. These are definitely skills that are going to be important when it comes to working in the future.