Hi. It's Paul Andersen. And this is disciplinary core idea ETS2A. It's
on the interdependence of science, engineering and technology. And so it's really that junction
between science and engineering that is important. And so if we think about what science is remember,
it's the study of phenomena in the universe. And so we're using this inquiry process to
come up with new knowledge to explain the way the world works. Engineering is slightly
different. We're looking at human needs and how we can use design to come up with solutions
which eventually become something called technology. And it makes our lives better. And so knowledge
and technology is kind of the bridge between science and engineering. In other words, knowledge
that is created in science helps us to create new technology which helps us do new science.
Let me give you a couple of examples of that. Quantum mechanics is really understanding
how nature works at the real small level. And one of the greatest breakthroughs came
at this meeting in Brussels in the early part of the 1900s. And at this meeting there's
some famous people here. We've got Max Plank, Marie Curie. Here's Albert Einstein. In the
second row we can see Niels Bohr. There's tons of other scientists who I should probably
know and were incredibly important in establishing the fundamentals of quantum mechanics. What
did that lead to? Well that led to things like lasers, transistors, microchips, MRI,
functional MRI. And so it's created all of this technology and we couldn't have gotten
that technology without a fundamental understanding of how electrons work. What's another example
of engineering going in the other direction? Well microscopes is engineering. So it was
created by inventors. And what it allowed us to see was a world that we'd never seen
before. We could see cells. Which created new sciences. Which led to new technology.
So it cycles like this. And so a better way to think about it is not being discreet different
fundamental studies. We've got the study of science and engineering. But we really have
a gradient. We have a blend here between the two. An example of something I've done in
my life that shows this blend. I spent two summers working at Montana State University
Center for Biofilm Engineering. What I was studying was antibiotic resistant bacteria.
And they form these things called biofilms. Which is less important than the center itself.
The center contains scientists. It contains engineers. It contains statisticians. And
they're all working together to understand biofilms and make the world better. To apply
it someway, in industry to make our lives better. And so it's really you're not going
to be a scientist or an engineer. You're going to have to kind of work either in these centers
or with groups or kind of wear two hats. And so how do we teach this in schools? What's
the teaching progression? Well, we want to start in the lower elementary grades by talking
about tools. Tools that make our lives better. And in science one tool that makes our life
better is the telescope. So that was used by Galileo. And he was able to see things
in the night sky that no one had seen before. It helped him to see and establish this heliocentric
view. In other words before then a lot of scientists believed that the earth was at
the center of the universe. And then people like Galileo put forward this heliocentric
model. In other words he wouldn't of been able to come up with that without tools like
telescopes. As we move into the upper elementary grades we want to start talking about tools
and instruments. And so an instrument could be, excuse me, a tool could be like a ruler.
Or a balance. Or a graduated cylinder. They allow us to make more precise measurements
and do better science. Telescopes and microscopes allow us to see things that are really far
away or that are really really close but incredibly small. And lots of times these new technologies
allow us to make new scientific discoveries. And so eventually we created electron microscopes
which eventually created better technology. As we move into middle school we want to talk
about this blend between science and engineering. This idea that advances in science lead to
new technology and engineering which can create new science. A couple of examples. Battery
technology is going to be incredibly important in our future as our products, technological
products that we carry around get smaller and smaller and smaller. And so research in
the area of batteries will create better batteries. Which will allow us to create more research.
Solar cells. Medical instruments are also kind of right along these lines. The more
discoveries we can make, the better technology we can have. And the better discoveries we
can make. As we move into high school we want to give names to these two things. It's really
research and design. Research is going to be the science side. Design is going to be
the engineering. And so when we get complex problems, and let me throw one at you, nuclear
energy will probably be a part of our energy solutions into the future. But one of the
problems is we create nuclear waste. So what do we do with that? Well now we've got a problem
that's going to span both research and design. To understand what to do with that waste we
need a physicist. But we also need a nuclear engineer. We need a geologist and we also
need a transportation engineer. We need an economist, construction engineer. Sociologist,
safety engineer. Psychologist, environmental engineer. In other words, it spans both of
these sides to come up with a solution. And as our problems become more and more complex,
our solutions are going to have to become more complex as well. Research and design
is a big part of that. And I hope that was helpful.