Natural sciences facts for kids

The natural sciences seek to understand how the world and universe around us works. There are five major branches (top left to bottom right): Chemistry, astronomy, earth science, physics, and biology.

There are some sciences that are used to study nature. According to these sciences, the things that can be observed in nature follow certain rules. These rules are often unknown, and natural sciences are about finding them. They often use what is called the scientific method to do this.

• Physics looks at how nature is made, and how different fields of nature relate to each other.
• Chemistry is about the elements, their combinations, and their reactions.
• Biology looks at living organisms, their development, and how they interact with each other.
• Geology looks at how the earth developed and what it looks like.

Some sciences, like Mathematics, can help in all of the above. They make it easier to talk about rules and models.

Other sciences that mainly look at how humans think and behave, and about their society are called social sciences.

Overview

The natural sciences are used to make new things (applied science). The natural sciences are guides to test new ideas. They are used to solve engineering problems and technology problems. Math helps the natural sciences to solve problems and make new things. Computers do this too. Computers and math are tools for the natural sciences.

The following sciences are natural sciences:

• Astronomy
• Biology
• Chemistry
• Earth science
• Physics
• Atmospheric science
• Oceanography
• Materials sciences

Images for kids

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  Onion (Allium) cells in different phases of the cell cycle. Growth in an 'organism' is carefully controlled by regulating the cell cycle.

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  The orbitals of the hydrogen atom are descriptions of the probability distributions of an electron bound to a proton. Their mathematical descriptions are standard problems in quantum mechanics, an important branch of physics.

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  Uncrewed and crewed spacecraft missions have been used to image distant locations within the Solar System, such as this Apollo 11 view of Daedalus crater on the far side of the Moon.

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  Aristotle's view of inheritance, as a model of the transmission of patterns of movement of the body fluids from parents to child, and of Aristotelian form from the father.

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  Plato (left) and Aristotle in a 1509 painting by Raphael. Plato rejected inquiry into natural philosophy as against religion, while his student, Aristotle, created a body of work on the natural world that influenced generations of scholars.

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  Isaac Newton is widely regarded as one of the most influential scientists of all time.

See also

In Spanish: Ciencias naturales para niños