The Power of Experimentation

[Editor’s note: Somehow I wrote the next two blog posts and then proceed to lose them before I could update the site. I have always felt that the first pass at writing generally best captures the true sentiments from the author. Hopefully, I am still able to accurately represent my experiences.]

The other day in Mr. Sowder’s class, his teaching assistant, Mrs. Hacket was conducting an experiment on thermal energy transfer. This was one of the last sections of a unit that focused on different types and uses of energy. The experiment involved pouring hot water into a Styrofoam cup and room temperature water into another Styrofoam cup. Lids were then placed on the cups to insulate them and a u-shaped metal bar was inserted through both lids to connect the two cups. The students had to record the temperature of both cups of water at one minute intervals.

My task for the day was to walk around the room and make sure the groups were doing the experiment correctly. Additionally, I decided to ask the students questions make sure they understood what were doing and to ask them questions that would encourage them to think in depth about the experiment. When I made my first pass with each group, I always asked, “What are we doing today,” and “What is the purpose of this experiment.” Very often, students aren’t sure what to do once they go back to the lab even though the teacher just explained the protocol in the class.

[As a side note, I had a conversation with my cousin this past weekend that made me reflect on why some students might not easily be able to listen to directions and apply them to the laboratory. In discussing my experiences working with different high school students, my cousin asked if I could verify something that he had heard. He’d heard that black children learn better when they are shown how to do something and white students assimilate information better when they are given audible information in a linear format. While I am certainly no expert in the field of learning and education, I thought about this for a moment and told him that I had not observed this trend. I thought that perhaps this trend might be true along some socioeconomic gap. Perhaps, students whose parents read to them a lot as infants and children are better accustomed to receiving audible information and mentally converting this to a real world experience. On the other hand, students who may not have been read to very much, might be more accustomed to learning solely through the actual experience and not being able to make the connection between audible instructions and a real-world activity. This was just a guess off the top of my head, but I thought I’d share since it seemed to be relevant here.]

Although most students couldn’t answer my first two questions immediately, through a bit of conversation we unveiled what they already had learned in terms of the purpose of today’s activities. In my second pass, I decided to ask questions like why were one cup warming and the other cooling, why was the metal bar warming up, what did that mean with regards to energy transfer, etc. I would literally think of any question germane to the understanding the experiment and I asked it. All in all, the students seemed to enjoy the activity and took very good data. Later, Ms. Hackett had the students combine all of their data and learn about taking averages and creating plots in Excel to predict where the temperatures would eventually level off.

After the class, I listened in on a conversation that Mr. Sowder and Ms. Hackett had about what had taken place during the hour. Mr. Sowder was sharing with Ms. Hackett his observations about the high level of engagement of the students. He felt and I agree that science is best taught through experimentation and exploration. It might be best to always start off a unit with a set of experiments, allow the students to record data, draw their own conclusions, and then finally, begin formally teaching the material. Inevitably, some of the topics covered in lectures will be conclusions that the students had already developed. This class period and conversation really re-emphasized the power that doing hands on experiments has. So much of my undergraduate experience has been spent in a lecture room that it is easy to forget how much hands on experience enhances what a student is learning.