WRITING SCIENCE IN CHILDREN’S LEVEL BOOKS

To me nothing is lovelier than reading to children before they go to bed. I love reading to kids; please, don’t ask me why; all I know is that I simply love reading to children.

In my Igbo culture adults tell children stories. I was born in the city, Lagos, but at age eight lived with my grandmother in our village. In the evenings she would tell me and my cousins’ stories. They were mostly animal stories. Those stories essentially conveyed our culture to us. Thus, a typical ten year old Igbo boy of my generation learned about our Igbo culture through hearing his grandparents tell him stories about our culture in the form of children’s stories.

I live in the West and tell children stories about human culture by reading to them extant books for children. These books are useful and tell children a lot of things they need to know about human nature and how to live in society.

Recently, it occurred to me that there are no books that tell children about the nature of science in children’s story form. May be such books exist but I have not seen them. I mean stories that essentially tell elementary school children about extant physics, chemistry, biology and earth science. Those subjects are obviously very technical but their essence can be conveyed to children in simple story forms.

As I began thinking about this issue it occurred to me that it is a great omission that such books do not exist, for children like hearing stories. If we could tell children the nature of science in simple story books they would be more able to pay attention to it when they get to secondary school and begin learning about science in earnest.

I recall my first year at secondary school. In physics the teachers dived right into it, teaching it to us as if we already had some preparation to understand what they were talking about. We were thirteen year old boys and had no idea what science was all about and there we were and our physics teacher was talking about real physics.

Physics is divided into two sections, classical and new physics; classical physics is divided into five subject areas: motion, aka mechanics, heat, light, sound and electricity; new physics comprises of quantum mechanics and theory of relativity.

Well, on the first day of my physics class the physics master was talking about Isaac Newton’s three laws of motion and gravitation. What the hell was he talking about, I kept thinking to myself. What do I care about motion and the gravitation of objects in space? I was simply not prepared to understand what the hell the man was talking about.

My chemistry master dived into talking about the nature of matter and atoms. Right from the first week he was talking about matter having three states: liquid, solid and gas...matter is now considered as having four states for plasma (nuclei without electrons attached to them) is considered a state of matter; the man went on and on talking about atoms having three particles: electrons, protons and neutrons etc. What the hell was this man talking about? For all I knew he was talking Greek.

I laid my head on my desk and tried to sleep. I was trying to escape from hearing a subject that I had no way of understanding. So, right from the beginning our teachers made science so uninteresting and unnecessarily difficult for us to understand that many of us tuned science out.

Instead, I enjoyed reading novels. I would lie on my dormitory bed and read books by such English writers as Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Pope, Dickens, Walter Scott, George Elliot, Jane Austin, Thomas Hardy, George Orwell and a whole host of others. I enjoyed history and of course read books on history.

But as we all know, we live in the age of science and every child ought to be helped to get interested in science. By science I mean physics, chemistry, biology and the other physical sciences and the language of science, mathematics (arithmetic, algebra, geometry, trigonometry, statistics, and calculus).

If a child goes through secondary school and is not interested in science he is simply not going to be a functional part of the scientific age we live in.

I believe that if science is well taught that average children will like it and do well in it. Of course, not all of us will become Nicolas Copernicus, Galileo, Isaac Newton, Eugene Huygens, Tyco Brahe, Johannes Kepler, Thomas Young, Charles Darwin, Mendel, Jenner, Alexander Flaming, Francis Crick, James Watson, Laplace, Lavoisier, Michael Faraday, James Clark Maxwell, J.J. Thompson, Henry Becquerel, Marie and Pierre Curie, Ludwig Boltzmann, Max Plank, Albert Einstein, Ernest Rutherford, James Chadwick, Neils Bohr, Louis Broglie, Werner Heisenberg, Emil Schrodinger, Pauli, Dirac, Alexander Friedman, George Lemaitre, George Gamow, Enrico Fermi, Lise Meitner, James Wheeler, Steven Weinberg, Eugene Wigner, Hugh Everett, John Bell., Alan Aspect, Alan Goth and Stephen Hawkins and the other giants of science. But with good teaching most children can become average in science and learn science.

I believe that to accomplish this objective we must find a way to present science as fun to children and the best way to do so is to write science as stories that parents read to their children or in books that children pick up and read before they get to secondary school.

I am not a science writer but here is how I would tell children about physics, chemistry and biology and earth science so that their attention is engaged. Once their attention is engaged then they can be taught science in a technical manner.

The below summary of science is meant to be understood by the typical twelve years old child; read it and have your children read it and discuss its content with your children; and do so in a playful manner. Science is fun, not the dreadfully difficult and boring subject adults make it out to be.

CHEMISTRY

ENERGY AND MATTER

Everything in our universe is made of energy and matter; the two are the same thing in two different states. Energy is matter and matter is energy; you can convert one to the other. Albert Einstein taught us about this phenomenon through his famous equation: E=Mc2.

THE STATES OF MATTER: SOLIDS, GASES AND LIQUIDS (AND PLASMA)

Matter manifests in three (now four) states, namely, solids, gases and liquids. An illustration is wood. Wood is a solid. That piece of wood can be burned. When you burn a piece of wood it is transformed to gas. The gas can be captured and cooled and it becomes liquid. Thus, the same wood can be in one of three states: solid, gas and liquid. Contemporary chemistry has decided that plasma is a state of matter.

Plasma exists where nuclei (protons and neutrons) and electrons are not attached to one another to form atoms. There are parts of space filled with unattached nuclei and electrons; the same holds true inside stars.

ATOMS AND ELEMENTS

Matter, whether it is in the form of solids, gases or liquids is composed of atoms. There are 118 different kinds of atoms, that is, elements in the universe; 94 occur naturally and 24 are synthesized in laboratories.

Examples of different kinds of atoms are hydrogen, helium, lithium, Beryllium, Boron, Carbon, Nitrogen, Oxygen, Florine, and Nickel and so on.

THE STRUCTURE OF ATOMS AND ELEMENTS

An atom is composed of three particles: electrons, protons and neutrons (protons and neutrons are in the nucleus of the atom; electrons circle the nucleus).

THE NUMBER OF SUB-ATOMIC PARTICLES AN ATOM CONTAINS DIFFERENTIATES THE DIFFERENT ELEMENTS

The different elements are characterized by the number of sub-atomic particles each has. For example, hydrogen has one electron and one proton in its nucleus (some hydrogen atoms are isotopes because they contain neutrons, sometimes one or two neutrons; they are called deuterium and tritium; protium is the regular hydrogen). Helium contains two electrons, two protons and two neutrons; lithium contains three electrons, three protons and three neutrons; Beryllium contains four electrons, four protons and four neutrons; Boron contains five electrons, five protons and five neutrons; Carbon contains six electrons, six protons and six neutrons; Nitrogen contains seven electrons, seven protons and seven neutrons; oxygen contains eight electrons, eighth protons and eight neutrons; Florine contains nine electrons, nine protons and nine neutrons and Neon contains ten electrons, ten protons and ten neutrons....we can continue along this line until we reach the heaviest element on chemistry’s periodic table, Uranium which contains ninety two electrons, ninety two protons and one hundred and forty-six neutrons (because uranium contain more neutrons than protons it is an isotope; it is unstable and shaky; it decays into other types of elements. Marie Curie studied Uranium’s nucleus and showed us the various elements it decays to).

ATOMIC NUMBER

Each element is given an atomic number. The atomic number of each element is determined by the number of protons it has in its nucleus.

Hydrogen contains only one proton so it has the atomic number one; helium contains two protons and is given the atomic number two...we go down the line until we reach uranium with 92 protons in its nucleus hence atomic number of 92 (and the synthesized 24 elements for a total of 118).

ATOMIC MASS

Each element has an atomic mass. Protons and neutrons account for the atomic mass. Electrons have negligible mass and for all intents and purposes are not useful in determining the mass of the atom.

To determine the mass of an element, therefore, we add the number of protons and neutrons in its nucleus and the negligible mass of the electron that circles the nucleus.

Hydrogen has one proton and one electron; since the electron has negligible mass its atomic mass is 1.01. Helium's atomic mass is the number of protons and neutrons added plus the negligible electron (2 protons added to two neutrons is 4). We continue along this line of counting protons, neutrons and electrons until we get to uranium whose atomic mass is 238.3 (92 protons plus 146 neutrons plus .3 for the electrons).

MOLECULES, COMPOUNDS

In nature many elements combine with others to form molecules; molecules have sort of permanent states of existence (compounds are molecules that may have temporary existence).

For example, two atoms of hydrogen and one atom of oxygen combine to form water molecule (it can also be called compound).

VALENCE

When two or more elements combine they do so by exchanging the outer shells of their electrons. In the compound called water there are one electron in each hydrogen atom and eight electrons in each oxygen atom.

The electrons in elements with more than one electron are arranged in shells (levels) in the atom. In the formation of water the outer electron shells in oxygen combine with the sole electron in hydrogen. The manner in which atoms, elements exchange electrons to form compounds, molecules and chemical mixtures is called valence.

CHEMICAL MIXTURES

Chemical mixtures occur when we mix two or more elements (substances). In the case of water, it is a mixture of hydrogen and oxygen.

SOLVENT, SOLUTE AND SOLUTION

In combining elements to form chemical mixtures they are dissolved in certain mediums such as water. The medium is called solvent and what is dissolved in it is called solute. For example, water is a solvent; in it we can add sodium chloride (Na Cl are the solutes), table salt; that table salt would dissolve in the water (salt is soluble in water).

Not all substances are soluble in water; for example, if you pour sand (silicon) into a bucket full of water the sand would settle at the bottom of the bucket and not dissolve.

If you add salt into water the salt dissolves completely and becomes part of that water, the water thereafter is called solution.

PHYSICAL CHEMISTRY

Elements (atoms) occur in nature as physical phenomenon. Chemistry that is studied like a physicist would study it, look at matter, atoms and particles without bothering with mixtures is physical chemistry.

ORGANIC CHEMISTRY

Some elements combine to produce organic phenomenon. By organic is meant biological life forming, such as plants and animals. Organic chemistry is the branch of chemistry that deals with the study of carbon and its compounds. Inorganic chemistry deals with the rest of the compounds.

Most organic states are combination of carbon and other elements such as hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen (and traces of others such as calcium, potassium, magnesium, phosphor, sodium, chlorine, iron, zinc, copper and so on).

The human body (and plants and animals) is composed of twenty six elements, primarily carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen and traces of 22 other elements such as iron, potassium, magnesium, phosphor, sodium, zinc, copper, calcium, chlorine and others.

THE UBIQUITY OF CHEMISTRY

The various elements exist either in single states or in combination with others (molecules). The understanding of how elements combine enables chemists to combine elements to come up with new products.

Medications, for example, are combinations of certain elements to form specific medications. Our household items like paints are combination of elements; in fact, many of the things we have around us were produced by chemists mixing many elements together or subtracting certain elements from others.

Our modern world is scarcely possible without the knowledge of chemistry.

PHYSICS

The word physics is synonymous with the word science. Greeks called the study of nature physics whereas Romans called the study of nature science. Thus, we can exchange the word physics for science.

Physics is the study of nature as it is, not as we want it to be; physics is an empirical science because it describes the world as it sees it and all of us following the scientific method can verify what it described; there is no room for belief in physics; what it says is either true or not true. Physics is considered the purest science, the king of the physical sciences.

Throughout human history human beings have tried to understand their world as it is not as they want it to be. If you go to any human group there are those whose activities can be considered scientific in the sense that they detached from their feelings and wishes and observe their surroundings in a dispassionate and objective manner.

In the Western world the attempt to understand nature on its own terms began with the Greeks. 2500 hundred years ago something happened in Athens, Greece. Men began using their minds and observations to understand their world as it is not as they wanted it to be.

Plato observed his world but did not like what he saw and used his mind to posit what seemed to him how the world should become. If he saw a human being tall or short, beautiful or ugly he imagined that there are ideal human beings, in spirit; Plato believed that there are architypes of what human beings ought to look like and behave like.

Ideals are wishes for there is no verification that they exist in nature. The idea of spirit is problematic for none of us has evidence that spirit exists. Thus, Plato is not a scientist in the sense that we now use the term.

Aristotle, Plato’s student tried to discard with ideals and wishful thinking and described the world as he saw it. However, he did not quite separate his wishes from his descriptions. For example, he rationalized slavery and oppression of women based on his wishes not reality. So, whereas we can call Aristotle an empiricist he was not a true scientist.

Democritus observed that matter can be reduced to what he believed is an absolute irreducible part and called that part atom.

Pythagoras and Ptolemy speculated on the nature of the universe; Ptolemaic astronomy is geocentric, that is, it believed that our earth is the center of the universe. That view of the universe was overthrown by Copernicus’ heliocentric view of the universe that the sun is the center of our solar system.

The study of modern physics began with Nicolas Copernicus in 1543 AD when he used pure thinking to reach the conclusion that the sun is the center of (he said the universe, which is wrong) of our solar system.

In 1610 Galileo used his improved telescopes to demonstrate in fact that the sun is the center of our solar system.

Other astronomers such as Tyco Brahe, Eugene Huygens and Johannes Kepler made significant observations on the arrangement of the starry objects in the sky.

In 1687 Isaac Newton posited the three laws of motion and his theory of gravitation and essentially began the study of motion on scientific terms. His three laws of motion are: “Every object in a state of uniform motion tends to remain in that state of motion unless an external force is applied to it. (2) The relationship between an object's mass m, its acceleration a, and the applied force F is F = ma. Acceleration and force are vectors; in this law the direction of the force vector is the same as the direction of the acceleration vector. (3) For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.”

Newton believed that light is made of particles whereas Huygens believed that light is made of waves.

In 1803 Thomas Young performed the double slit experiments proving that light is wave as opposed to particles.

In 1805 John Dalton resurrected the Greek idea that matter is composed of atoms. Robert Boyle made inroads to the study of gases. The French Laplace and Lavoisier contributed to our understanding of gases especially in identifying the various elements.

By the mid nineteenth century the study of classical physics was advanced. Europeans had clear understanding of mechanics, heat (accelerated by James Watt’s discovery of the steam engine), electricity (Michael Faraday and James Clark Maxwell), sound and light.

In 1897 J. J. Thompson discovered the electron; in 1895 Henri Becquerel studied radiation (Alpha, Beta, Gama) given off by decaying nuclei; around the same time, Marie and Pierre Curie realized that when the nuclei of certain elements decay they change and form other elements.

In 1900 Marx Plank in studying black bodies showed that light has units that he called quanta. In 1905 Albert Einstein showed that light not only has units (which he called photons) but have physical effects for they can knock off electrons from hot bodies.

In 1911 Ernest Rutherford discovered that the atom is not the final unit of matter. He showed that atoms have nuclei which contain protons.

In 1932 James Chadwick showed that in the nucleus is another particle that he called a neutral particle hence neutron.

In 1913 Neils Bohr showed how electrons circle the nuclei of atoms. By the 1920s all hell broke loose as quantum physics came to its own and became a part of what is now called new physics.

Bohr played a critical role in developing the complementarity principle; one aspect of it is the understanding that light can behave as wave or particles depending on which you want it to behave like.

Werner Heisenberg posited what he called uncertainty principle (that you can ascertain the position of electrons inside atoms or their momentum but not both at the same time); Heisenberg also formulated matrix mathematics that helped explain the behavior of subatomic particles.

Emil Schrodinger provided wave mathematics, the mathematics of the behavior of particles inside atoms. Paul Dirac posited that when atoms nuclei decay they not only generate radiation (light and heat) but also a particle that he called neutrinos. (If neutrons, for example, decay they result in protons and electrons and neutrinos). By the 1930s we had clear understanding of what goes on inside atoms.

COSMOLOGY

Building on Einstein’s theory of General relativity, Alexander Friedman pointed out that the universe is expanding.

If the universe is expanding it must have begun in one spot, pointed out Georges Lemaitre. Edwin Hubble used his telescopes to show that indeed the universe is expanding.

By the 1940s George Gamow was experimentally showing how the universe began in one spot and exploded. By the 1950s despite Fred Hoyle’s counter argument, his view of a steady state universe that had always existed, scientists proved that the universe began in a point in time.

Robert Wilson and Arno Penzias in 1965 picked up the sound of the explosion proving that the universe began at a point in time (actually the sound they picked up is the universe at age 400, 000 years when nuclei captured electrons and hydrogen atoms were formed and light was released from the hitherto dense plasma...called cosmic microwave background radiation).

By the 1960s and 1970s astrophysicists had refined what they call the standard model of how the universe began.

This model posits that 13.7 billion years ago, a particle of light came out of nowhere and got inordinately hot and exploded. In the first minute it shattered into photons and the photons combined to form electrons and quarks and the quarks combined to form protons and neutrons. By the end of the third minute protons and neutrons had combined to form the nucleus of hydrogen, helium and lithium.

Physicists often wonder why the incipient universe did not collapse back unto itself and ended its existence. Alan Goth posits what he calls inflation theory that says that the speed of the universe’s expansion was greater than the speed of light, 186, 000 miles per second hence the expanding universe escaped the gravitational pull of its source.

Another baffling question is that technically the original explosion is supposed to produce about equal number of matter and anti-matter, so how come the two did not attack and annihilate each other. To solve this conundrum physicists posit a fudged hypothesis that perhaps for every billion particles of anti-matter produced a billion and one particles of matter were produced so that when both attacked each other some particles of matter remained to continue the existence of our matter based universe.

The universe continued expanding in plasma form (nuclei not attached to electrons) until 400, 000 years later. At that point nuclei captured electrons and atoms were formed.

Thereafter, there existed a cloud of hydrogen and some helium. Over millions of years' later space occurred in the cloud of hydrogen. Hydrogen separated into clumps.

Each clump of hydrogen was acted on by gravity and pressured inwards. In its core heat and high temperature led to the fusion of two hydrogen atoms into helium atom and light and heat given off. Stars were formed.

Inside stars the fusion of hydrogen atoms to helium atoms takes place. The initial stars were massive in size and did not live long before they exploded in supernova.

Millions of years later the initial stars had exhausted their hydrogen and began fusing helium to carbon. This nucleosynthesis process continued and when it got to iron the star expanded in size, became exceedingly hot and exploded. The heat accompanying the explosion led to the formation of all elements beyond iron.

In time the debris (nebula) produced by the exploded massive star (supernova) agglomerated to form smaller stars and planets.

Our sun and its nine planets (Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto) were formed from exploded stars 4.5 billion years ago. Debris that were not incorporated into the sun or its planets circle the solar system as part of the Kuiper belt or Ord belt; part of these rocks are comets and others asteroids.

The sun has enough hydrogen fuel to last another five billion years. However, in about a billion years the sun would start fusing helium to carbon and get hotter. Its heat would dry up water on earth and destroy all biological life forms on earth. Four billion years later the sun sloughs off its outer layer and its core becomes a little shining light, a red dwarf star and eventually flickers out and becomes a piece of rock in space.

When more massive stars die their outer parts are shattered and spilled into space whereas their core collapses to form either neutron stars (everything crushed to neutrons) or black holes (something so dense that nothing, not even light that enters its event horizon comes out).

WATER COOLS THE INITIAL HOT PLANET EARTH

To our hot planet earth comets brought water (water formed in space got frozen on pieces of rocks called comets). The hot earth melted the frozen water on comets. Water gradually cooled the hot planet earth. In time 70% of the planet’s surface became covered by water.

THE FORMATION OF BIOLOGICAL LIFE FORMS

Apparently, into the early earth’s water certain elements mixed up and were heated up by lightning and formed amino acids and other bases for biological life forms (this is the hypothesis of Urey and Miller). In time single cells were formed from amino acids. The single cells in time attached to each other and the combination became multicellular and in time formed plants and animals.

EVOLUTION

Evolution, as Charles Darwin pointed out, culminated in the evolution of human beings; human beings are animals that are self-aware and can understand the universe they live in.

DARK ENERGY AND DARK MATTER

The universe is expanding largely due to the pressure of dark energy (which constitutes 73% of the universe...dark matter which constitutes 23% of the universe balances the galaxies and stars so that they do not collapse into one another).

THE FOUR FORCES OF PHYSICS

The study of physics has identified four major forces at work in the universe: gravity, electromagnetism, strong nuclear force (that holds protons and neutrons inside nuclei) and weak nuclear force (that decays nuclei).

Scientists are trying to unify the four forces into one force; Einstein tried very hard but did not succeed and no one else has succeeded so far.

BIG CHILL

As the universe expands galaxies and stars are separated from one another by great distances; they lose heat and, sooner or later, will die. It is speculated that in a few trillion years galaxies and stars would die. The universe would become composed of separated atoms and when those decay the universe would be composed of unattached particles; electrons and neutrons will decay to radiation and only protons would exist.

When protons decay there would only be cold radiation (cold light) in the universe. After that we do not know what would happen. Let us then say that the universe began in hot light and ends in cold light. Hot or cold light is light. Thus only light exists.

But where did the original light particle that exploded in the Big Bang come from? Physics does not know and does not want to speculate.

Religionists say that that original light came from what they call spiritual light; to them a particle of spiritual light was transformed to a particle of physical light. That one particle contains all the information that produced our physical universe. That particle of light is powerful indeed if it could give rise to this entire universe. To religionists the fact that the entire universe comes from one particle of light (and when the universe ends it returns to that one particle of light) is evidence of the existence of a powerful creator.

There is no evidence supporting the religious view; like all religion it is accepted on faith not evidence.

BIOLOGY: LIFE SCIENCE

On planet earth, a planet in the sun’s solar system, a system in the tail end of a spiral galaxy called Milky Way, where it is neither too hot nor too cold, the so-called goldilocks part of the galaxy, apparently, elements combined in water to form life forms.

Cells formed, first as single cells and then the cells combined into multicellular organisms, and those formed plants and animals.

Over 3.5 billion years ago animals began evolving and culminated in human beings. Human beings as we know them have been around for about 100, 000 years. They evolved in Africa and then spread to the five continents about 80, 000 years ago.

The study of biology (divided into zoology and botany), physiology and anatomy and the study of cells (molecular biology) are very critical in understanding how our bodies function. Such understanding enables us to treat sick bodies and design medications to heal our various medical disorders.

CELLS

Whereas the smallest unit of physical matter is the atom, the smallest unit of biological forms is the cell. Plants and animals have cells. Plant and animal cells look alike but have some differences.

A cell has an outer membrane, cytoplasm; inside it are organelles and a nucleus where both the DNA and RNA are located.

A group of cells act together in performing the organism’s functions, they are called tissues; there are different kinds of tissues, called organs (such as the heart, lungs, brain, liver, kidney etc.). The organs work together for the existence of the biological organism to survive.

PLANTS AND ANIMALS

Plants and animals must obtain nutrition to survive. Through the process of photosynthesis Plants take light from the sun and combine it with water to form chlorophyll and carbohydrates. Animals eat leafs and fruits from plants and obtain their carbohydrates, a crucial need for their survival.

Both plants and animals breathe. In their respiration plants give off oxygen and animals take those in and use them to do work in their bodies and then give off carbon dioxide and plants take those in to do their internal work. Thus, plants and animals have a symbiotic relationship, they need each other to survive; without the one the other will not survive.

Plants and animals are born, grow up and reproduce their kinds (reproduction is either sexual or asexual) and then die and their offspring keep on living.

Some plants and animals have only one cell or a few cells (they are called protists, an example is amoeba). The amoeba, a single celled organism has Eugena, Flagellum, Pseudopods and Cilia.

Animals are classified into vertebrates (those with back bones, such as fishes, amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals) and invertebrates (those with no back bones, such as sponges, Cnidarians, Flatworms, roundworms, segmented worms, mollusks, Echinoderms; then there are arthropods and insects).

Plants and animals propagate their species through heredity and evolution. In each plant’s cell, or animals’ cell, in the nucleus is information on how to reproduce its cells.

The study of heredity, chromosomes, genes, DNA, RNA has come a long way since Mendel broached it. Francis Crick and James Watson in 1953 made significant contribution to the understanding of heredity. By the end of the twentieth century most of the genes in plants and animals had been sequenced and understood.

We now know that cells divide either through Mitosis (asexual reproduction) or Meiosis (occurs in organisms that have sexual reproduction).

The environment and changes in it affects the state of cells, plants and animals. Changes in the environment forces cells in plants and animals to adapt; those that successfully adapt live and those that failed to adapt die.

Mutation occurs in the process of adaption. One form of plants or animals do mutate to other forms. The idea of natural selection and evolution is critical in understanding biology. There is putative evidence for evolution.

THE HUMAN BODY

The human body is perhaps the universe’s most complex machine; we have only begun understanding how it was put together and works.

The human body is a system of muscles (flesh) pasted on a bony skeletal frame. Bones have joints; the musculature system is attached to the skeletal system. There are voluntary and involuntary muscle tissues.

There is the digestive system, (which begins in the mouth where food is masticated, chewed) and proceeds to the esophagus, stomach, small intestine, large intestine.

There is the circulatory system that circulates blood around the body, it includes the heart, blood vessels, blood pressure (arteries and veins); blood has different types.

The respiratory system includes how air is taken into the body through the nose, the role of the lungs, breathing (inspiration and expiration) through the nose and skin (perspiration).

The excretory system includes how food is digested and waste product excreted from the body; it involves the role of kidneys, ureters, urinary bladder and urethra.

The human reproductive system is a bit different in males and females. Males produce sperm and liquid that carries them through the urethra of the penis. The female reproductive system includes the vagina, fallopian tubes, menstruation, ova, pregnancy, womb, birth of a baby.

The human body has a control system of nerves. The nervous system is primarily two kinds, central nervous system (brain and spinal cord) and peripheral nervous system (nerves in the rest of the body). Nerve cells, called neurons are specialized cells for transmitting messages from one part of the body to another. Neurons have synapses at which information is transmitted from one neuron to another.

Nerves are intricately involved in our reflex actions, and our five senses of (1) seeing, (2) hearing, (3) touching, (4) tasting and (5) smelling.

The human body has an endocrine system, glands and hormones that play critical roles in its functioning. Hormones are chemical messengers that control the actions of certain body functions, for example, certain hormones regulate the production of spermatozoa and ova.

ECOLOGY

Although to the physical eyes what is seen in nature seem separated but in fact they are interconnected and each supports the existence of the others. Plants support the existence of animals (by giving them oxygen and food, carbohydrates) and animals support the existence of plants (by giving them carbon dioxide. Everything in the environment is related to others and depends on them to survive.

The study of the interrelationships of things in the environment is called ecology. The earth is a biosphere and within it is the ecosystem, community of plants and animals, plant and animal populations.

Changes in the ecosystem lead all in it to change or die. For example, if the ozone layer that prevents extra light and heat from the sun from reaching us on earth is destroyed we shall certainly die from lack of oxygen and from heat strokes.

GEOLOGY: EARTH SCIENCE

How old is the earth? A catholic archbishop counted the generations of human beings that began with the biblical Adam and Eve; he counted the several generations that existed until Jesus was born and got 4, 000 years and added the two thousand after Jesus was allegedly on earth and concluded that the universe is 6,000 years old.

In the 18th century folks began observing land formations. The Scotsman James Hutton (1726-1797) is considered the founder of geology.

The study of mountains and segmentation of hills that observers could see with their eyes showed them that the various layers of lands on a hill were not all formed at the same time but formed incrementally. As of today, it is believed that the earth’s land has existed for 4.5 billion years.

Our earth is segmented into parts: the top part is the solid crust, below it is the viscous mantle, below that is the outer core made of molten iron and the inner core made of solid iron.

The earth’s atmosphere is segmented into layers; beginning from the ground they are: Troposphere, Stratosphere, Mesosphere, Thermosphere, Ionosphere and Exosphere. The exosphere gradually enters into space (the temperature in space is about -273 degrees Fahrenheit).

The earth is one of nine planets that rotate around the sun (a medium sized star). The earth rotates on its axis; it makes a complete cycle every 24 hours. The earth takes 365 days to rotate around the sun.

The earth travels in space at the speed of 67,000 miles per hour. The rotation of the earth determines what side of it is facing the sun or away from it at any point in time and that makes for day and night and the four seasons of winter, spring, summer and autumn.

The earth has two hemispheres, north and south; the two poles are also the earth’s magnetic poles. The earth is divided into latitude lines and longitude lines (those affect how weather and time is calculated).

The earth is part of what is called terrestrial (land) planets, as opposed to gaseous planets like Jupiter. It has land; on its surface are rocks.

There are sedimentary rocks, metamorphic rocks, and igneous rocks (igneous rocks formed from magma; when volcanos throw up hot minerals and they become cold and harden).

Weather erodes rocks and land masses; over time weather wears down even mountains. There are different types of weathering, including mechanical weathering, and chemical weathering; weathering can take soil from some areas to form soils in other areas.

Rain and water erodes soil; rivers deposit soil along their banks; rivers carve out canyons, such as the majestic Grand Canyon in Arizona.

Glaciers also erode soil and deposit soil along their paths; indeed, glaciers move boulders and deposit them hundreds of miles away from where they originated. A boulder of rock you see in your town may have been moved to it by ancient glaciers (the various ice ages covered most of the earth with snow and ice so do not be surprised if there was once snow and ice in your town...why don’t you make that your science project and find out and write about it).

Wind does erode soil (blowing wind removes topsoil and blows it away and deposits it elsewhere). Annually, wind blows sand from the Sahara desert in West Africa and deposits that soil across the Atlantic Ocean in the Americas!

Inside the earth are certain moving forces. Study of plate tectonics shows us that the viscous mantle is shifting and sliding on to each other; this movement sometimes leads to volcanoes. When plates collide major earthquakes occur. These earthquakes can occur in oceans and produce tsunamis.

The earth’s history began with a supernova somewhere in space and the agglomeration of debris from the shattered star into other stars and planets, such as planet earth.

Initially, the earth was inordinately red hot on its surface. Thereafter comets brought frozen water to cool it down. Water accumulated on earth.

Inside the earth’s waters animal and plant lives formed. Plants and animals die and left their fossils.

We can date these fossils (carbon dating) and from them understand the age of the earth. Fossil dating led geologists to divide the earth into many eras, including Precambrian era (the oldest) and in the following order, The Paleozoic era, The Mesozoic era and The Cenozoic era.

Seventy percent of the earth is covered by water (oceans, ground water, rivers, and lakes). Weather and climate play crucial roles in the state of the earth.

Weather and climate are greatly affected by the atmosphere of the earth; the atmosphere in turn is influenced by space and the objects in space, such as the moon, the sun and other planets. The moon affects ocean tides.

The moon was once part of the earth before an object the size of Mars struck the earth and split it off from the earth and set it in motion orbiting around the earth.

The solar system is composed of the sun and the nine planets that rotate around it. The sun, like the other stars is a ball of hydrogen gas that has parts to it: an inner core, a photosphere, chromosphere, sunspots and corona.

The earth is about 93 million miles away from the sun; the moon is about 250, 000 miles away from the earth. It takes light from the sun about ten minutes to reach planet earth; it takes light from the moon a little over a second to reach planet earth.

The furthest planet from the sun is Pluto.

CLASSICAL PHYSICS: MECHANICS, HEAT, LIGHT, ELECTRICITY AND SOUND

Text books on physics are divided into classical and new physics. Classical physics is divided into mechanics, heat, light, sound and electricity. New physics deals with the study of particles and general relativity.

MECHANICS

Isaac Newton’s discovery of the laws of motion established the study of mechanics and machines (how to move things and what we can use to move things along).

We use force (energy) to do work. The simplest force we use to do work is the lever (those were used to move the stones that built the ancient Egyptian pyramids). Levers are the simplest machines (there are many types of levers). Another type of simple machine is the pulley, what we use to pull loads up.

The study of motion deals with subjects like speed, velocity and gravitation of the galaxies and stars and planets. The earth, for example, has a gravitational pull on everything on it; if you throw a ball up the earth’s gravity pulls it down.

If you build a machine that flies and want to fly away from earth it must be able to escape from the earth’s gravitational pull on it to fall back to it. Rockets, for example, must exceed the speed of 17,000 miles per hour to escape the earth’s gravitational pull and escape into space; thus tremendous energy is required to boost rockets up into space.

Aerodynamics is the part of mechanics that studies the forces at work in flight. In the here and now earth there is kinetic energy that enables the individual to move from one spot to another. The physics of mechanics studies how things move on earth and in space and that includes gravitation.

In sum, mechanics deals with the behavior of matter and energy in motion; if you throw a ball you give it kinetic energy and it moves. The amount of power your throw gave it determines how far the ball can get to before it stops. In flight it does so with the energy your throw gave it. That energy is being pushed back by other energies (say, wind). Eventually, an object in motion is acted on by other things (equal energy) and stops. It, therefore, seems impossible to invent a perpetual motion machine.

HEAT

Heat is measured by temperature so the study of heat and temperature is intertwined. Pressure also plays a critical role in the study of heat for when you exercise pressure on an object you make it hot, hence have heat.

Heat affects matter; it gives it motion energy, makes it move. For example, if water is heated it boils and the water molecules move around in the pot and sooner or later the water is turned into gas (steam) that evaporates (moves away) from the pot.

We can change solid to liquid (such as when we apply heat to solid ice cube and melt it). Heat and its absence expand or contacts matter. Hot gas expands; cold gas contracts.

Thermometers are used in measuring temperature levels. There are two basic temperature scales, Fahrenheit and Celsius. Each can be converted to the other.

Water and other compound have freezing points, melting points and boiling points; Heat plays a role in radiation. Radiation is hot light in motion. Heat has conduction and convection.

In sum, heat deals with temperature, hot and cold and pressure and motion. If you heat something it becomes hot (high temperature) and moves (motion). If you boil water (heat) the hot water molecules move around and eventually evaporate from the pot; the sun evaporates water on earth.

Heat always moves from hot to cold areas not vice versa. The study of heat enabled us to understand the nature of energy and matter, such as the fact that energy and matter are the same force in two different states.

Heat taught us the three laws of thermodynamics: conservation of energy and matter, energy and matter can change forms but their total quantity in a closed system, our universe remains constant; the law of entropy, systems always run down, from organization to chaos; for example, our bodies is an organized system that would eventually decay and is no longer in organization; the entire universe is organized and will eventually run down and become chaotic.

SOUND

Sound is produced when matter collides; for example, when you clap your hands you make sound. That sound vibrates away from your hands; sound travels in space as waves; there are different kinds of sound waves. Waves can move smoothly or cresting.

Sound travels at about 750 miles per hour (planes that travel beyond the speed of sound are in supersonic mode; they need a lot of work, energy to make them do so).

LIGHT

Light is the medium through which we see. Most of the light on earth came from the sun. Light has wave function and particle function.

Light has colors (if you shine light from the sun on a glass prism you see the various colors that compose it reflected; the colors of light are red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet).

Some light colors are visible and others are not visible to our eyes. The visible light spectrum is actually the smallest part of light; there are all kinds of light that our eyes cannot see. In space, for example, we see darkness but in that darkness are all kinds of light (radiation).

Light has reflection and refraction (we can use concave mirrors or convex mirrors to make light curve, refraction of light). In refraction light is bent by a medium it is traveling in, such as water.

Albert Einstein said that nothing in the universe travels beyond the speed of light, which is 186, 000 miles per second.

However, as John Bell established, when particles are entangled and separated and placed at the opposite ends of the universe and one of them is stimulated and reacts the other instantaneously reacts at the same time as if no space and time separates them. Alan Aspect has verified this nonlocality of entangled particles in laboratories. Thus, certain things seem to travel beyond the speed of light.

ELECTRICITY AND MAGNETISM

Electricity and magnetism, as James Clark Maxwell pointed out, go together. Electricity flows towards a magnetic pole. This knowledge is used in inventing electrical circuits that enable electric current to flow in the direction it is attracted to by magnets. There are open and closed circuits. Batteries play roles in circuits (fuses and circuit breakers)

Electricity is the study of electrons. Light has no mass but electrons are light with some negligible mass in them. We know how electrons behave inside atoms, more importantly we know their role in generating electricity and light.

Certain elements conduct electricity better than others; for example, copper is a good electrical conductor; scientists are discovering superconductors of electricity).

QUANTUM PHYSICS AND GENERAL RELATIVITY

New physics talks about the discoveries of the composition of the atom and how particles behave inside atoms and outside atoms. We know a lot about particles physics and use that knowledge to improve our lives.

At the various sites where scientists have mechanism for speeding up particles and smashing them unto one another to split them and see what is inside them is showing us more and about sub particles of atoms; hundreds of those have been discovered; they are divided into leptons and bosons.

At the European Organization for Nuclear Research, CERN, near Geneva, Switzerland particles are collided at speed approaching the speed of light and shattered so that we can see what is inside them. It is hoped that these studies will show us what happened during the Big Bang, the nature of the original particle that emerged from nowhere. The discovery of the Higgs Boson, was called the god particle, the original particle that emerged from God to form our universe?

The understanding of electrons has improved our lives (just about every gadget produced by high tech industry deals with electrons, such as television, radios, telephones, computers, Internet etc.

The nuclear of atoms can be split (nuclear fission) and energy released. That energy, radiation can be captured and transformed to electrical energy to power cities or used to destroy cities as in nuclear bombs (atomic bombs and hydrogen bombs).

Einstein’s theory of general relativity improved Newton’s theory of gravitation; it tells us that space and time are not separate but is a continuum; it talks about the curvature of space and time. General relativity is beyond the scope of physics for children so we shall not pursue it further.

DISCUSSION

The essence of science can be presented in simple prose and told as story so that children can read it and have some understanding of what science is. Thereafter, children can be taught technical science, and the language of science, mathematics, a subject beyond the scope of this paper.

If you studied the physical sciences, say, have a master or more degrees in any of them and is a story teller please write about your field in such a simple language and story form that children can read and grasp what you are talking about. That way you arouse children’s interests and curiosity; that interest and curiosity leads them to take science classes with engagement.

If I had read simplified science, as in this paper, before I began secondary school, given my tendency to rationalism I probably would have made an excellent physicist.

It is incumbent on you, the scientist, to get our children interested in science. Science is probably the best thing that human beings have done since they became human beings, about 100, 000 years ago. Pass science on to the next generation of human beings.

CONCLUSION

The formal study of science tends to give us the impression that we are part of matter and energy and that our lives end with the death of our universe. This philosophy of materialism seems true but there is hope for life after death.

According to Einstein’s theory of general relativity, if you are travelling at the speed of light you would age less than those in our world who travel at snail speed.

If you travel beyond the speed of light you would not age at all. The rub, however, is that objects in our type of bodies cannot travel at the speed of light and beyond it.

Perhaps, non-material objects can travel beyond the speed of light hence can live forever and ever. As John Bell’s non locality theorem posited, entangled particles travel instantaneously from one end of the universe to another.

In the beginning of our universe 13.7 billion years ago, a particle of light came out of nowhere; that infinitesimally small particle contains information on everything that happens in our vast universe.

What exactly is the nature of that original particle of light and where did it come from? Physics does not know for beyond the moment of singularity (when everything was in one thing before the Big Bang explosion that separated things) the laws of physics breakdown.

Religionists say that the original light that got our universe going came from spiritual light and that spiritual light is transformed to physical light. Spiritual light they tell us is eternal.

How do we know that there is no such thing as eternal spirit that we are parts of? Perhaps there is a spiritual world and we in the physical world are temporary clones of it; could it be that we on earth are a sort of matrix of people in other dimensions?

One must have an open mind for knowledge is always improving; there does not seem an end to what is knowable.

Science is less than four hundred years old (1543-2016); science is just in its beginning stage; hundreds’ of years from today what we today call science would be considered superstitious nonsense. So, let us plug on trying to understand how our universe is put together; that herculean effort is the best part of our existence on planet earth. Our earth will eventually die along with its sun.

Before it dies perhaps we shall have the technology to migrate to other planets and to exoplanets in other solar systems and then to other galaxies and before our universe dies tunnel our way to other universes; indeed, we may even have the ability to do time travel, to the past and the future.

All these seem like fun to me. Let us have fun with science.