Do you
remember in science class being divided into lab groups and being
handed a black box? Your group’s task was to examine the box,
shaking it, tossing it in the air, smelling it, everything short of
opening it, to figure out what was inside. The lab’s purpose
was to strengthen your powers of observation and emphasize that not
everything in science is instantly obvious or easily interpreted.
Indeed sometimes all we have with which to draw conclusions is the
output itself.
In science a black box is “a device, system or object which
can be viewed solely in terms of its input, output and transfer
characteristics without any knowledge of its internal
workings.”
Good luck and remember that with a black box all you can do is
guess how it works based on what happens when you do something to
it (input) and what occurs as a result of that (output).
