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How To Get High-Schoolers Involved In Real Science?
Wellington Grey writes "I'm a physics teacher and have been wondering what ways it's possible to get students to participate in or donate to real science projects. I encourage my students to help out with things like Galaxy Zoo (which has just released a new version) and to get them to install BOINC on their personal computers. Do Slashdotters out there have any other suggestions that would be appropriate for the 11-18 age range? Extra credit if you can think of a way that I can track their progress so that I can give them extra credit."
"I'm a high school student and my physics teacher always comes up with ideas to get us to participate in or donate to real science projects. He even encourages us to help out with things like Galaxy Zoo (which has just released a new version, grrrr, dreadful updates again) and even gets us to install BOINC on our PERSONAL computers. Do Slashdotters out there have any suggestions that would be appropriate to satisfy this 35-year-old physics teacher? Extra credit if you can think of a way that I can fake my progress so that I can get extra credit."
Virtual Betting on Facebook for non-geeks.
Take pictures of space!
http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/03/18/1645216
Kelly LeBrock.
Have you tried to show them successful stories like this one? High schoolers are more prone to do something that a) has good chances to success and b) has very good chances to make them look good. Show them enough successful projects like "hey, how cool is that, uh?", and you probably will be able to gather even the not-that-geeks.
AT &F1DT0,T0800665544 - Real men, real help desk support.
You want to get students interested in "real science", then as your examples you cite some computer programs? And they learn what from this?
When I was in school, the best science was *always* some sort of physical demonstration. I still remember being in physics class where we calculated the speed that a ball ought to go down a ramp, fly through the air and hit a spot on some paper. I marked an "X", and sure enough, the ball landed on the X (within experimental error).
I also remember being fascinated at my local science museum at a big box with pegs and a bell curve painted on the glass. Every few minutes balls would fall randomly through the pegs, yet fall into the bell curve. [of course, in recent years they got rid of all the cool stuff in favor of "corporate demonstrations" that totally suck, but that's another subject]
Then there were the chemistry experiments... and field trips to the park... you get the idea.
Make science real by making it something physical that students can see/touch/smell.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
When I was in high school in my chem AP class, my teacher had set it up so that at the end of the year we all had to read a timely chemistry research paper that had been published in a major journal and prepare a presentation on it for the class. This may not be what you want to hear but from what I remember of my chem. AP curriculum, I was grossly underprepared to do any serious research. However, I definitely remember than dealing with both a research subject and the academic publishing style gave a lot of background for my future.
That said, I'm computer science not chemistry, so I guess I don't know how that would have turned out in the long run. Even though I'm not chem, I know that the experience in reading real research papers definitely prepared me for graduate and research coursework in college more than anything else in my time in high school.
That said, my minor is physics, so I do know a little bit about that as well. If you've done electromagnetism/electronics, I would encourage maybe giving your students an electronics project. It was nice to have a little practical lab after all that theory. An infinite field of one ohm resisters is one thing - rewiring your coffee maker with a job server is another (btw if any of your students actually manage to do this, send me an email). That said, many of your students (I was one) may really like theory and Maxwell's equations and vector calculus, so don't make the course too EE based.
I know I've been out of school for a while, but I believe what you're looking for is called a SCIENCE FAIR.
There's a great documentary on a teacher who faced the same challenges and found innovating ways to overcome them. He needed to give his students some projects that would have real-world results that could be measured. In the end, he helped a classroom of very talented kids construct some world-class devices that made breakthroughs in the areas of lasers, inertial guidance, optics, and more.
Very inspiration stuff, I highly recommend watching. Professor J. Hathaway should be commended for his innovative approach to this exact situation. More information on the documentary can be found here: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0089886/
Pr0n
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
You are teaching them science is boring. Stop it!
BOINC is interesting if your machine finds the aliens, and actually told you it did.
Galaxy Zoo is for when there is no fresh paint to watch dry.
In my physics classes in high school we DID things, and then we explained the math behind them, and why that was physics. Most interesting physics demonstrations involve statics, harmonic oscillation, analytical mechanics - physical motion - or at least the interesting ones do.
Sometimes we'd just start the week with letting people ask questions about things that made them curious that might be related to physics.
Here's a list of projects we did, and which your students could do:
- build bridges out of balsa wood to demonstrate statics principles and the ability to bear loads (by loading them up until they break)
- build water balloon catapults and see who throws the balloons farthest
- build ping-pong ball alcohol canons
- launch model rockets, preferably with instrument payloads
- build hover crafts using vacuum cleaner motors and race them down the hallway past the principals office
- build a Focault's pendulum to demonstrate rotation of the earth
- put a bowing ball on the end of a rope and show it doesn't smack you in the face because you let it go and it doesn't get energy added to the system on its way back
- demonstrate the coefficient of sliding friction with a triangle block, a square block with a hile drilled through it, some twine tied through the hole, and a fishing scale
- build a model roller coaster
- build a tesla coil and use it to shoot aluminum rings cut from the ends of pipes up in the air
- build a blower box with an orange traffic cone glued on top and float a ball there to demonstrate Bernoulli's principle
- dig out the switch/relay/light boxes from the 1960's classes and wire them all together to build an adder
- use a Van de Graff generator to make people's hair stand out straight from their heads
- show them a Newton's Cradle execu-toy
- put grapes in a microwave oven to demonstrate plasmas
- make little boats with wedges in their backs, stick pieces of soap there, and race them to demonstrate surface tension
- spin buckets of water without the water falling out
- shock people with Leyden jars
- build a Wimshurst generator
- build a Sterling cycle engine with a bicycle wheel and rubber bands
And that is just stuff we DID, off the top of my head, 20+ years ago -- stuff I still REMEMBER to this day, in my day job as a SCIENTIST -- because I had a great physics teacher in High School.
-- Terry
When you're not doing that, you are desperately trying to find a new angle on old data to write a paper for publication. You need to do this in order to keep your reputation (and therefore pay and ability to get funding) hot. Once written, you'll spend more time trying to get it published somewhere, or peer-reviewing some other guy's paper.
Almost never will you get into the lab, and even when you do most of your time will be spent setting up, calibrating, tweaking, debugging and modifying your equipment. The chances of you making a discovery that will be named after you are infinitesimally small, as all the good ones are already taken. Even then, you'll probably be dead before anyone recognises the contribution you have made - or the true value of your work.
You best bet, if you want your children to become successful scientists, is to teach them how to stay awake in meetings, diss their colleagues while appearing to be friendly, engaging in office politics, learning to recognise who to scmooze and kiss up to and marketing old ideas with a new spin - every year for the rest of their careers.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
Let them use proper explosives, and let them make their own thermites, black powder or napalms. They'll develop an aptitude for chemistry (and perhaps an appreciation of medicine).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermite
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gunpowder
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Napalm
Let them play with a decently-sized ballista, trebuchet, or onager. They'll learn all about dynamics and ballistics, wind resistance, action-reaction (the onager kicks a bit), and the delivery of kinetic energy via projectile.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ballista
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trebuchet
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onager_(siege_weapon)
However, if they combine the explosives with the projectiles, their neighbours will study the law.
[Yes, I had a dangerously mis-spent childhood, and turned into a chemical engineer]
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire