Science begins with a desire to understand nature. Accordingly, the central activities in the seventh- and eighth-grade courses are observation, data collection, and the beginning of theory development.
Teachers impart fundamental scientific principles through direct instruction, field studies and tutorials. Students study life science with extensive investigation into the animal kingdom. They study earth science, which covers astronomy, weather, and geology.
High-school students meet two hours each day to study mathematics and science. In ninth grade, students study biology, followed by chemistry in tenth grade. They spend eleventh and twelfth grades studying physics, including Newtonian mechanics, electricity and magnetism and modern topics in physics. These courses incorporate the MATLAB programming language for modeling physics concepts. (MATLAB is also used in the senior math course). The goal of all four courses is to discover how the physical universe works. Students proceed by observation, generalization and mathematical analysis. Problem-solving is a key ingredient in this understanding and is emphasized throughout.
