From: Marc Siegel <marc@quest.arc.nasa.gov>
Subject: doing experiments in class
Date: Wed, 24 Dec 1997 07:38:31 -0800 (PST)
Hi, I was interested to read the active discussion yesterday. As a manager at Quest, I don't get much first hand experience with what happens in classrooms, so I find the insights offered very useful. Thanks. I wanted to share an experience I had recently when I was invited to my nephew's class (3rd grade) to do a NASA presentation. I talked a bit about the Mars Pathfinder mission (I love describing the wacky basketball style bounce landing), but the most fun was when we did an experiment about dropping marbles into a tray of flour. The point was to find how the speed of the impact (height of the drop) related tothe size of the crater and the diameter of the ejecta. it wa clear that the kids almost never got a chance to actually experiment, and the energy level during this time was quite high. I think we determined quite well that though the crater size gets a bit bigger with increasing speed, the diameter of the ejecta really increases. Kids were able to reach these conclusions from the data we took, and it was really fun. I was most surprised at how excited kids were to do the experiments (it is fun to chuck marbles and watch flour fly), but how taking the data and drawing conclusion weren't greeted with near the enthusiasm. In retrospect, I shouldn't have been surprised, but I was. So we found ourselves talking a lot about about recording data and analyzing it is the real reason for experiments (in the real world), not just having fun doing the experiment. Anyway, it was a real learning experience for me, and I sure wish the curriculum or teacher in my nephew's class was able to do more hands-on science. It seems like the way to get kids engaged. I'd be interested to hear why this often doesn't seem to happen....as Stephaine wrote, in elementary school, science is mainly lecture. Anyway, I'm off the net for a while, but Happy Holidays to everyone. Yours, Marc I