This is the last in our current series of ExpeRimental! We hope this helps you get the most out of all of the experiments, and remember to let us know how you get on. We'd love to know what you think of this series, so we can keep improving it, so please take a minute to fill out our survey (you could win £100!) www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/ZGHPJ7H And check out all the experiments, and the downloads, here: www.rigb.org/families/experimental
Yes, definitely great ideas for home experiments. However the biggest mistake in education is to force kids to make false assumptions = aka. "predictions". Most important is to teach them to observe, pay attention to detail, question everything and teach them how to recognize and avoid false assumptions. PLEASE - real science is the exact opposite of making unsubstantiated assumptions. It's about observing, assessing and compiling facts. The worst thing you can do to a kid is to let them make a wild guess and then call it prediction and science - it's just mean patronizing and it sets them into very bad and dangerous stereotype.
The video is not implying that a wild guess is science. Rather, it encourages kids to make a prediction before observing the experiment. After observing the results kids can decide whether their initial understanding of the experiment is valid, or whether it needs to be adjusted. This ability to update our understanding of reality is critical to science, so it is great that kids develop such ability. It can be very tempting to refuse to change our understanding because we don't want to feel like we were wrong to begin with.
This is exactly the kind of stuff that made me hate science as a kid. I discovered science after graduation and now it's all I spend my time thinking about and doing. School made me dislike it intensely before then, especially because of "experiments" like these ones. These absolutely are not what real science experiments are like. This is not how science works. This is not what's interesting about science. Science education is hard but this is the exact avenue that completely turned me off as a kid. Also, if you don't understand science or don't love it, for god's sake, don't try to teach it. The interesting parts of science for me are 1. The concepts / theories 2. The process by which we discovered them 3. The fact that the universe is comprehensible at all.
This is the last in our current series of ExpeRimental! We hope this helps you get the most out of all of the experiments, and remember to let us know how you get on. We'd love to know what you think of this series, so we can keep improving it, so please take a minute to fill out our survey (you could win £100!) www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/ZGHPJ7H
And check out all the experiments, and the downloads, here: www.rigb.org/families/experimental
Yes, definitely great ideas for home experiments. However the biggest mistake in education is to force kids to make false assumptions = aka. "predictions". Most important is to teach them to observe, pay attention to detail, question everything and teach them how to recognize and avoid false assumptions. PLEASE - real science is the exact opposite of making unsubstantiated assumptions. It's about observing, assessing and compiling facts. The worst thing you can do to a kid is to let them make a wild guess and then call it prediction and science - it's just mean patronizing and it sets them into very bad and dangerous stereotype.
The video is not implying that a wild guess is science. Rather, it encourages kids to make a prediction before observing the experiment. After observing the results kids can decide whether their initial understanding of the experiment is valid, or whether it needs to be adjusted. This ability to update our understanding of reality is critical to science, so it is great that kids develop such ability. It can be very tempting to refuse to change our understanding because we don't want to feel like we were wrong to begin with.
This is exactly the kind of stuff that made me hate science as a kid. I discovered science after graduation and now it's all I spend my time thinking about and doing. School made me dislike it intensely before then, especially because of "experiments" like these ones. These absolutely are not what real science experiments are like. This is not how science works. This is not what's interesting about science. Science education is hard but this is the exact avenue that completely turned me off as a kid. Also, if you don't understand science or don't love it, for god's sake, don't try to teach it.
The interesting parts of science for me are 1. The concepts / theories 2. The process by which we discovered them 3. The fact that the universe is comprehensible at all.
Ah, but then we are all different!