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- For a topic outline on this subject, see List of basic topics in science
Science: 
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Scientists maintain that scientific investigation must adhere to the scientific method, a process for properly developing and evaluating natural explanations for observable phenomena based on empirical study and independent verification. Science, therefore, avoids supernatural explanations until all other natural possibilities have been considered, and rejects arguments from authority.
Fields of science are commonly classified along two major lines: Natural sciences, which study natural phenomena; and Social sciences, which study human behavior and societies. Whether mathematics is a science is a matter of perspective.
Fields of science can be further distinguished as pure science or applied science. Pure science is principally involved with the discovery of new truths with less (or no) regard to their applications. Applied science is principally involved with the application of existing knowledge in new ways.
Erosion is a natural process, but in many places it is increased by human land use. Poor land use practices include deforestation, overgrazing, unmanaged construction activity and road or trail building. However, improved land use practices can limit erosion, using techniques like terrace-building and tree planting.
A certain amount of erosion is natural and, in fact, healthy for the ecosystem. For example, gravels continually move downstream in watercourses. Excessive erosion, however, can cause problems, such as receiving water sedimentation, ecosystem damage (including fish kills) and outright loss of soil.
The far side of the Moon as photographed by the crew of Apollo 11. The largest crater pictured is the Daedalus crater.
Leonardo has often been described as the archetype of the "Renaissance man", a man whose seemingly infinite curiosity was equalled only by his powers of invention.[1] He is widely considered to be one of the greatest painters of all time and perhaps the most diversely talented person ever to have lived.[2]
It is primarily as a painter that Leonardo was and is renowned. Two of his works, the Mona Lisa and The Last Supper occupy unique positions as the most famous, most reproduced and most parodied portrait and religious painting of all time, their fame approached only by Michelangelo's Creation of Adam.[1] Leonardo's drawing of the Vitruvian Man is also iconic. Perhaps fifteen of his paintings survive, the small number due to his constant, and frequently disastrous, experimentation with new techniques, and his chronic procrastination.[b] Nevertheless, these few works together with his notebooks, which contain drawings, scientific diagrams, and his thoughts on the nature of painting, comprise a contribution to later generations of artists only rivalled by that of his contemporary, Michelangelo.
- ...that silica aerogel (pictured) holds 15 entries in the Guinness Book of Records for material properties, including best insulator and lowest-density solid?
- ...that acoustic levitation is a method for suspending matter in a fluid by using acoustic radiation pressure from intense sound waves in the medium?
- ...that the genus Entomocorus includes a catfish species that lives only one year?
- ...that a successful experimental system must be stable and reproducible enough for scientists to make sense of the system's behavior, but unpredictable enough that it can produce useful results?
- ...that Abbott Lawrence Rotch established the Blue Hill Meteorological Observatory in 1885, which maintains the longest-running meteorological record of any observation site in the United States?
