I never thought a simple pendulum could generate so much excitement. We are studying estimation and measurements. One of the things that I wanted children to understand is the concept of 'per second'. So we decided to look at simple pendulum. Each group made a simple pendulum of different lengths using thread and stone.
The story goes that, Galileo was attending the church one Sunday and he noticed the swinging chandeliers. Using his own pulse, Galileo measured the oscillations. He found that oscillations can be used to keep exact time (which was useful for making clocks) and oscillations don't depend on the weight (which may have led him to the famous Pisa experiment). Would you want to discover what Galileo found out ? I asked, and the students got in to a frenzy.
Each group counted the number of oscillations in 10-20 seconds to find out its period (the number of oscillations per second). We did 5 measurements to get average and accurate period. They now know that more number of observations when averaged give accurate measurement. Tomorrow we will be tabulating all the lengths and periods and find out what the data tells us. What surprised me was the amount of excitement this generated.
This confirms my hunch that children like to step into the shoes of Galileo, Newton, Darwin or Faraday. We should teach science as it was done by these great people. The way they found things for the first time !
The story goes that, Galileo was attending the church one Sunday and he noticed the swinging chandeliers. Using his own pulse, Galileo measured the oscillations. He found that oscillations can be used to keep exact time (which was useful for making clocks) and oscillations don't depend on the weight (which may have led him to the famous Pisa experiment). Would you want to discover what Galileo found out ? I asked, and the students got in to a frenzy.
Each group counted the number of oscillations in 10-20 seconds to find out its period (the number of oscillations per second). We did 5 measurements to get average and accurate period. They now know that more number of observations when averaged give accurate measurement. Tomorrow we will be tabulating all the lengths and periods and find out what the data tells us. What surprised me was the amount of excitement this generated.
This confirms my hunch that children like to step into the shoes of Galileo, Newton, Darwin or Faraday. We should teach science as it was done by these great people. The way they found things for the first time !
No comments:
Post a Comment