Additional amusement has come for many in guessing what the M might stand for (possibilities include Matrix, Magic, Muffin, Mystery, Mother and Membrane). Regardless of what the M might possibly mean, M-theory has become one of the most interesting and active areas of research in theoretical physics today.
"For a more technical explanation, see w:M-theory (simplified explanation)."
Jaguar Cars
Jaguar Cars is a brand of automobiles made by Jaguar Land Rover. This is a British car builder, owned by the Indian builder Cans Tata Motors since the beginning of 2008. It was established in 1922 by William Lyons. It was renamed Jaguar in 1935. Jaguar is owned by the Indian automobile manufacturer Tata Motors Ltd. Jaguar is known for its luxury saloons and sportscars.
Jaguar was a private company until it became part of the British Motor Corporation in 1966. The new company was called British Motor Holdings. In 1968 that company joined with Leyland Motors to became British Leyland. In 1975 British Leyland was nationalised. In 1984 Jaguar was made private again by Margaret Thatcher. Ford bought Jaguar in 1989. In 1999 it was made part of Ford's "Premier Automotive Group" along with Aston Martin, Land Rover, Volvo and Lincoln. In 2008, Ford sold Jaguar and Land Rover to Tata Motors. Jaguar is now a brand of the merged company called Jaguar Land Rover (JLR).
The company was originally in Blackpool, but moved to Coventry. Today Jaguar automobiles are made at the JLR factory in Castle Bromwich in Birmingham. In late 2018 was open new plant in Slovakia.
Jaguar owns the Daimler brand (not Daimler-Benz). Jaguar bought the British Daimler Company in 1960. Daimler became a brand for some of Jaguar's saloon automobiles, but is not used now.
As of 2017, JLR sells the following different Jaguar automobile ranges: XJ, XF, XE, XK, F-Pace, E-Pace, iPace, and the F-Type.
Jaguar has won many sports car races, like the Le Mans 24 Hours and other races.
Scientific method
Scientific method refers to ways to investigate phenomena, get new knowledge, correct errors and mistakes, and test theories.
The Oxford English Dictionary says that scientific method is: "a method or procedure that has characterized natural science since the 17th century, consisting in systematic observation, measurement, and experiment, and the formulation, testing, and modification of hypotheses".
A scientist gathers empirical and measurable evidence, and uses sound reasoning. New knowledge often needs adjusting, or fitting into, previous knowledge.
What distinguishes a scientific method of inquiry is a question known as 'the criterion'. It is an answer to the question: is there a way to tell whether a concept or theory is science, as opposed to some other kind of knowledge or belief? There have been many ideas as to how it should be expressed. Logical positivists thought a theory was scientific if it could be verified; but Karl Popper thought this was a mistake. He thought a theory was not scientific unless there was some way it might be refuted. On the other hand, Paul Feyerabend thought there was no criterion. For him, "anything goes", or whatever works, works.
Scientists try to let reality speak for itself. They support a theory when its predictions are confirmed, and challenge it when its predictions prove false. Scientific researchers offer hypotheses as explanations of phenomena, and design experiments to test these hypotheses. Since big theories cannot be tested directly, it is done by testing predictions derived from the theory. These steps must be repeatable, to guard against mistake or confusion by any particular experimenter.
Scientific inquiry is generally intended to be as objective as possible. To reduce biased interpretations of results, scientists publish their work, and so share data and methods with other scientists.
Science and things that are not science (such as pseudoscience) are often distinguished by whether they use the scientific method. One of the first people to create an outline of the steps in the scientific method was John Stuart Mill.
There is no one scientific method. Some fields of science are based on mathematical models, such as physics and climate science. Other fields, such as many fields of social science, have rough theories and rely more on patterns that emerge from their data. Sometimes scientists focus on testing and confirming hypotheses, but open-ended exploration is also important. Some scientific fields use laboratory experiments. Others collect observations from real-world situations. Many areas of science are quantitative, emphasizing numerical data and mathematical analysis. But some areas, especially in social science, use qualitative methods, such as interviews or detailed observations of human or animal behavior. Focusing too much one kind of method can lead us to ignore knowledge produced using other methods.
Some textbooks focus on a single, standard "scientific method." This idea of a single scientific method is largely based on experimental, hypothesis-testing, quantitative areas of science. It doesn't apply very well to other areas of science. It is often written as a number of steps:
Although written as a list, scientists may go back and forth between different steps a number of times before being satisfied with the answer.
Not all scientists use the above "scientific method" in their day-to-day work. Sometimes the actual work of science looks nothing like the above.
Let's say we are going to find out the effect of temperature on the way sugar dissolves in a glass of water. Below is one way to do this, following the scientific method step by step.
Does sugar dissolve faster in hot water or cold water? Does the temperature affect how fast the sugar dissolves? This is a question we might want to ask.
One simple experiment would be to dissolve sugar in water of different temperatures and to keep track of how much time it takes for the sugar to dissolve. This would be a test of the idea that the rate of dissolving varies according to the kinetic energy of the solvent.
We want to make sure to use exactly the same amount of water in each trial, and exactly the same amount of sugar. We do this to make sure that the temperature alone causes the effect. It might be, for example, that the ratio of sugar to water is also a factor in the rate of dissolving. To be extra careful, we might also run the experiment so that the water temperature does not change during the experiment.
This is called "isolating a variable". This means that, of the factors which might have an effect, only one is being changed in the experiment.
We will do the experiment in three trials, which are exactly the same, except for the temperature of the water.
One way that makes it easy to see results is to make a table of them, listing all of the things that changed each time we ran the experiment. Ours might look like this:
If every other part of the experiment was the same (we did not use more sugar one time than the other, we did not stir one time or the other, etc.), then this would be very good evidence that heat affects how fast sugar is dissolved.
We cannot know for sure, though, that there is not something else affecting it. An example of a "hidden cause" might be that sugar dissolves faster each time more sugar is dissolved into the same pot. This is probably not true, but if it were, it could make the results exactly the same: three trials, and the last one would be fastest. We have no reason to think that this is true at this time, but we might want to note it as another possible answer.
The replication crisis (or replicability crisis) refers to a crisis in science. Very often the result of a scientific experiment is difficult or impossible to replicate later, either by independent researchers or by the original researchers themselves. While the crisis has long-standing roots, the phrase was coined in the early 2010s as part of a growing awareness of the problem.