Abstraction in Science

Abstraction is used all the time in the sciences.  For example, the following flow chart helps scientists see the big picture to make decisions about which visualization to use to represent different types of data (credit: Stephen Burton, LCPS for sharing this incredibly useful abstraction).

Biology

In biology, students can use abstraction to classify animals based on what are considered only the important characteristics between them. 

Based on the diagram below, what important details do bears and tigers have in common that set them apart from a frog or snake?

Earth Science

Students can use abstraction in earth science to help identify rocks and minerals.

Your friend Jason calls you on the phone and wants you to help him identify a cool rock he found because he heard you've been studying rocks at school. Based on the following information, what kind of rock does he have?

"I was walking home from school and I decided to walk through the soccer field but I was walking fast and I tripped on this cool rock. The rock is shiny in the sunlight and is gray in the shade. I thought maybe I'd take it home and add it to my collection just to show off to my big brother Tom. Tom won't let me see his rock collection because he's afraid I'll break one of them. When I rub the rock on paper it leaves a gray streak. The rock feels heavy for its size and I bet it wouldn't be very tasty to eat it."

Physics

Line of best fit to generalize a bivariate relationship. [SCATTER PLOT WITH A LINE OF BEST FIT].  Distance vs. time graph. slow, medium, fast graph.

Chemistry

Ionization Energy: The amount of energy needed to remove an electron from an atom.

Things we can abstract from this graph:

• The element with the highest ionization energy in each of the first several peaks on the graph is a noble gas (Helium, Neon, Argon, etc). This is because these elements have a full outer electron shell and are less inclined to give up an electron, which would make them less stable.

Periodic Trend According to Atomic Radius

Image shows periodic trend relating to atomic radius.

What we can abstract from this image:

• Atomic radius increases as we go down a column in the Periodic Table. This makes sense because as we go down a column, atoms have more protons in the nucleus and more electrons in their electron cloud.
• Atomic radius decreases as we go across a row in the Periodic Table. This might be counter-intuitive at first because as we go across a row atoms gain more protons and electrons, just like they do when we go down a column. The difference is that the electrons are added to the same valence shell when elements are in the same row. More protons in the nucleus (positive charge) pull harder on these electrons (negative charge), actually shrinking the atomic radius.
• By going down a column, electrons are added to an electron shell further from the nucleus, which increases the atomic radius.