ReSET Volunteer Wayne Sukow's 5th Grade Program Report

Late in February I finished my 12^th one-hour session at Key Elementary School, working with all the 5^th grade students (~95) on Longitudinal Waves and Patterns of Sound Waves. The highlight was students seeing and in some cases making Chladni Patterns on square aluminum plates by stroking them with an old violin bow; students saw how the sand sprinkled on top of the plate(s) moved about into the zero displacement regions. The patterns vary and can be striking. Now my goal is to get enough plates, 4-5 so that it becomes a full-lab activity for all students. Next year we plan to get photos. Students also had opportunities to hear audio patterns using resonating tubes…just ordinary cardboard ones.

Earlier I did a session with four classes of 5^th grade students (~100) at Key where students produced and drew the resulting patterns when light passes through a prism,  the reversal of color order when light is diffracted with a grating, an item which is ubiquitous in our everyday life. All students had the opportunity to see the effect of varying how tightly slits in the grating are squeezed together. That required the purchase of multiple 35 mm slide gratings with three different spacings between slits. There are enough left to do the same experiment next year. The data was the pattern—both order and spacing as measured from the straight ahead direction of the  resulting color patterns. I have some invoices for you. The frosting on the patterns with light experience included working with polarized light to see how stress patterns in materials such as plastic, are made visible by inserting the plastic between two sheets of Polaroid film.

 As is becoming the tradition at Key, following the temporal order of their science curriculum,  all 100  5^th graders worked on geology activities including: learning how to make a mineral streak and recording the streak of a set of minerals, measuring the relative hardness of some minerals after having practiced how to do a scratch test and testing minerals to see if they responded to a magnetic field; I  need to invest in some old nickels, which are made of the metal by the same name for next year activities. Students will be surprised that they are attracted by magnetic too.  We also talked about the production of minerals in tectonic and non-tectonic processes, which drew upon studies they had already done in class. I need three  more pieces of lava with small (< 1mm) gemmy olivine crystals . To expand and follow my inclusive patterns in -------a science topic (light, sound, and soon geology) my intent is for student to learn that a considerable number of science experiments/investigations are is guided by looking for patterns that repeat…..the underlying intent is to accustom students to always look for patterns in repetitive events in everyday life to have  greater appreciation for  and to gain a better understanding of what causes them. Now the data is the pictures or the patterns seen…when they are in 12^th grade and beyond they will be ready and accustomed to looking for patterns in data…data which is now numbers….although extreme high energy physics is back to observing pictorial patterns to understand the fundamental nature of matter and the universe. Then, some day one of them will integrate science and literature as they pen,  An  Ode to Patterns.

Cheers,

Wayne

A ReSET Pre-K Classroom Report

ReSET CEO and Founder Harold Sharlin reports:      

      Today I visited a class of four year olds at CentroNia day care center in Mt. Pleasant in DC.   CentroNia is bilingual.  I had spent 4 one-hour sessions with the day care's 8 teachers.  We worked on a simple series circuit with a 6-volt battery, a wall switch and a flash light bulb in a socket.

            My objective was to so familiarize them with the circuit that they would feel confident to do experiments on electricity.  I supplied each teacher with a kit of:

            six volt battery

            wall switch

            flashlight bulb and socket

            wire stripper

            screwdriver

            25 feet of bell wire

             In the class sessions with the teachers I had them assemble a series circuit from scratch.  Working with the wire strippers was hilarious.  They were a fascinating and fascinated group.  One teacher took her kit home to show her husband.  He wanted to know whether he could touch the battery terminals.  Sure, she said, it's only 6-volts.  I also emphasized safety saying that they must tell their children that the 110-volts in their homes was not for touching.

             We talked about electricity in the home and its uses, about generating stations, and AC vs. DC.  Not all of this information was needed for their classes but they all reached a certain level confidence.

At the end of four hours of class they were ready to teach electricity.  I gave each a simple teacher's handbook as backup.

             In the classroom with the children, I was amazed at the teacher.  She had done the experiment with the class previously but they were eager to see it once more.  They sat around in a circle and very well behaved.  Ann, the lead teacher did the experiment and Sylvia sat with the children in the circle.

             Ann emphasized the idea of circle/circuit.  The children identified each part as she held them up: battery, bulb, switch, and wire.  She held up a wire and said where shall I put this:  On the battery they shouted.  Where do I put the other end?  On the switch.  The children were satisfied to watch, quietly, while Ann connected all the wires and threw the switch.  She also had a picture book that had pictures showing electricity including lightening. 

I could not have been more pleased.  This was what I hoped would happen after four hours instructing teachers.  There will be eight teachers teaching 83 two, three and four year olds about electricity.  I am scheduled to meet the other classes also. 

Me?  I was the visitor whom they called, Professor Harold in English and Spanish.  

Editor's Note:  For information on research involving science for pre-K students, check out  http://nieer.org/psm/?article=298  

ReSET Volunteer David McInnis: Lessons From The Atmosphere

This week’s lesson was about condensation, the atmosphere, and PV=nRT (without the equation).

I started listing the 3 states of matter (yeah, yeah, there’s really 4, let it go) on the board.  I got as far as solid before students started calling out, “liquid”, “gas”.   I was impressed.  So I asked them for examples, and quizzed them on different materials.  Pudding is a stumper.

Next each table grabbed a cup of water and put ice in it, then we talked about condensation a bit.  To keep things simple and clear I kept condensation limited to water in the atmosphere.  After talking we looked at the cups, where water had condensed on the outside of the cup.
No one was impressed!

However, I asked them where the condensation came from.  This puzzled most of them.  Others answered, “from the water” or “from the ice”.  “So the water went through the cup?”, I asked and then explained what had really happened.

We talked about the atmosphere, starting with how thick or high it might be.   I asked if you could breathe in outer space: “Noooo!”, said everyone.  So then, there had to be some height at which we transitioned from atmosphere to no atmosphere.   We talked about Mt. Everestand how even the most fit climbers had trouble breathing at 5 miles above sea level.  So what guesses did they have about the atmosphere’s thickness.

There’s a bit of a problem I glossed over here.  Namely that somewhere around 6 miles up no one would have enough oxygen to survive, but where space starts is a soft number.  For space flight, 60 miles is considered to be the point where you would become an astronaut.  For most orbital analyses 100 miles is considered a minimal orbit.   For easy math I went with 100 miles,  I should have gone with 10.

Physicist routinely use simple approximations to examine possibilities and provide quick insight to how things work.  Usually this is called order of magnitude approximations or back of the envelope calculations.  It’s an extremely valuable thing to learn, especially for checking to see if your answers or ideas are in the ball park.

We talked about the size of Earth, which required a small detour into circumference anddiameter.  I claimed that it’s 24,000 miles to go all the way around Earth and its diameter is 8000 miles…   close enough.  Then I tried, with questionable success, to explain idea of not being too accurate, of making a quick approximation.  I grabbed a 14″ globe and claimed it was 8″ in diameter.   Holding up a 12″ ruler I asked if this was accurate or a rough approximation…  they stumbled for a sec, but then got it.   Annnndd I introduced the concept of ratios (they did know about fractions).

Phew!  At this point I had knew I was really pushing how much material we could cover, but surprisingly there weren’t any squirmers or any acting out.  They seemed both intrigued and straining to grasp what all was going on.

With ratios in their heads I said we wanted to figured out, roughly how thick the atmosphere would be on the globe.  Guesses generally ranged between 2 to 4 inches.
So Earth is 8000 miles in diameter and the globe was 8″ in diameter.  Our guess at the atmosphere’s thickness was 100 miles.  So how thick was it on the globe?

I started with the ratios and Ms. Haynes jumped in.  It turned out that this coincided with their current math lessons perfectly.  They came up with 1/10 inch.    I found a piece of cereal box and draped it on the globe.  The atmosphere is a lot thinner than most people imagine.

Mostly as a quick fun point we then did a demo showing that air pressure works in all directions.  Over a bucket, students took a mostly full cup of water and placed a piece of paper over the top.  They quickly  inverted the cup while holding the paper in place and then ‘released’ the paper once upside down.  The paper stays in place and the water (mostly) doesn’t spill.
If you try this note that it’s a huge hit on the fun-meter.  Every student will have to try it.  Warning: you will need some large sponges to clean up spilled water.  Also, they will try to use completely soaked paper, so tell them 1 paper per try.  We used small disposable plastic or waxed cups.

After cleaning up I took an empty 2 liter soda bottle and put an empty balloon on it.  The classroom had a sink, so I ran hot water over the bottle, explaining that this would heat the air inside.   The balloon inflates (modestly).
Shocking to me, the students were thrilled by this.
So I asked, what would happen if I then ran cold water over the bottle?
“It’ll shrink” and “the balloon will get sucked into the bottle” were common answers.    ‘Nice!”, I thought.

For the last experiment…  and I can’t believe we got through all of this in an hour!    … we made clouds.   An empty 2 liter bottle with a little  (~1 cup) of hot-ish water gets pumped by a bicycle pump with a ball needle poked through a wine cork on it.   When the pressure builds up a bit the cork pops out, with a bang, and the rapid decompression causes water vapor to form in the bottle, like a cloud.  We had 2 sets of equipment.  Three students at a time are needed;  1 to hold the bottle, 1 to pump, and 1 to hold the hose near the pump nozzle.

Beware!  The pop is quite loud and will startle everyone watching, including you, no matter how many times you see it (it’s a timing thing).  I explained and exclaimed repeatedly that there would be a loud boom but it wouldn’t hurt anyone.  The students absolutely love this and everyone wants a turn pumping.  They also forget to look in the bottle for the cloud, or to clear the cloud out before trying again.  Considering how many ideas they were exposed to during this lesson, a little play time was clearly earned.

Lots of excitement, lots of ideas in this one.   

ReSET Volunteer David McInnis on Floating and Sinking with 3rd Graders -

This week I was on my own; two classes, about 1 hour each.  That’s about 35 3rd grade Tasmanian devils swirling around with unlimited energy in a small classroom vessel.   The lesson is what I assisted with last week in the 4th grade classes, sinking and floating, aka density.

I dressed up nicely (stopping short of a tie which should only be used for weddings and funerals) , used real anti-antiperspirant, and had a cup of chamomile instead of coffee.  I gave Ms. Haynes a quick warning that this was my first time teaching elementary students and that I was a bit nervous.  She patted my shoulder and with a huge smile declared, “Don’t you worry.  I’ve got your back.”  I felt grateful and relieved.

After being introduced and unpacking the supplies, I started the “Floating and Sinking lesson” lesson, a ReSET standard.  This lesson involved using several containers of water and definitely required a stack of cleanup sponges.

The point of the lesson was to act as a demonstration of the scientific method and as an introduction to what density is.  In last weeks 4th grade lesson we actually weighed a baseball and a golfball.  The 3rd graders haven’t quite learned to read scales so I used a simple balance made of a clothes hanger with sandwich baggies attached at opposing ends.   As a class, we guessed and then measured how many golfballs equals one baseball (3).  I then gave them 150g as the weight of the baseball and asked them to find the weight of one golfball.  As it happens this lined up perfectly with their current math lessons and Ms. Haynes jumped in, taking over and giving me a much needed break.  I was sweating up a storm, my thoughts were jumbled, and I had no idea where we were going next.   Luckily I had written down a simple check list of the activities and located where we were.

Next we formed a hypothesis about what floats and what sinks in water.  They had some wild ideas but generally agreed that heavy things will sink and light things will float.  No one in either class voiced dissent, but I felt a little guilty corralling their ideas toward this conclusion.    We then placed both balls in a large container of water and made an observation…     the heavy item floated and the lighter sunk.

There were 4 tables, with 4 to 5 students at each.  They shared the equipment.   After a few steps chaos was starting to erupt over who was doing what.  It was critical to set up an order of turns; I simply numbered  around each table.

Here I tried to explain density and stumbled, wallowed, and was left facing a room full of puzzled faces.   At this point the teacher rescued me and held up two clear plastic containers holding markers.  One was nearly full, the other only had a couple of markers in it.  She explained that density was like having more stuff packed into a space.   So which of the containers had a ‘high’ density?

Next we tried floating a lacrosse ball in a cup of water and observed that it sinks.   Then, after removing the ball, we added about 1/4 cup of salt to the water.

Several of the kids in both classes had a taste of the material before being told what it was.  Sigh.  So, yes, third grade still requires purely non-toxic materials.

After adding the salt, we placed the lacrosse ball back in the water, where it floated!  Sounds simple, right?  The students went crazy over this.  After things calmed down a bit, we talked about how we had changed the density of the water.

For the final experiment we took some of the salt water and dyed it red…  well, I dyed them red.  When then took a clear cup of water and used an eyedropper to gently place some salt water along the inside of the cup.   It sinks to the bottom and forms a red layer that the students can easily see.  This experiment turned out to be underwhelming, but they seemed to get the point nonetheless.

In the end I learned that you cannot lecture to third graders and that finding great simple examples to explain you idea is critical.

ReSET Volunteer Pete Mehravari Helps Students Change Orbit

It is most insightful to see how children at that age think and process out solutions to a problem. Sometimes they come at a problem from a completely different angle than a person with a more learned mindset.

Pete Mehravari, who serves as a coordinator for teams of ReSET volunteers through the US Patent and Trade Office, is excited about his work at Whittier Educational Campus, where he teaches 3^rd- and 4^th-grade students engineering, physics, and material science. Mehravari, now in his second year with ReSET, has been using programmable robots to teach basic computer programming and problem solving skills.

Last year, Mehravari’s students were tasked with programming their robot to autonomously traverse a course by figuring out distances and angles between checkpoints and adapting those measurements into basic programming code. After completing the basic course, students made up their own advanced course and were successful in making their robot traverse the course on their first try.

Mehravari, who has a BS in Electrical Engineering from Georgia Tech and a JD from Atlanta’s John Marshall Law School, feels that his early experiences with science as a child helped lay the foundation for future success: “My father was an electrical engineer who brought science and engineering into the household at a very early age. This helped me gain confidence and excitement in these fields, which in turn opened up many opportunities, not only in higher education, but also in my employment goals.”

From ReSET Volunteer David McInnis' blog

David has blogged a number of times on his ReSET experience.  Here's the first one:

So Tuesday I emailed someone at ReSET asking to talk with them about what they do and if they’d need someone like myself.  The director responded asking if I’d like to meet at a school on Wednesday at noon.  I was nervous and really wanted to push it off for a bit, but nothing was going to change that way so I accepted.
We met at the school.  He had a clothes basket full of equipment and some 5 gallon buckets.  We talked for a bit, things seem to go well. He explained that they are invited in to a class to teach one hour a week for 6 weeks.  The school’s teacher is always present and is responsible for class management.  The volunteer should organize the lessons with the teacher, but can still choose the topic.
So after we talked he asked if I wanted to assist for a class. I agreed, while feeling nervous.
I just played the part of the assistant, helping out trouble spots, handing out materials, etc.  All went well.
The topic was an introduction to density by examining whether objects float or sink in water.
The kids really liked it.  They have so much energy and were so curious and playful.
So we did a second session as well.  I felt more comfortable and really enjoyed it.

Afterwards we talked about options; should I go and assist teachers that lack science background with their science lessons, or teach a group on my own, or shadow a couple more volunteers.   Later in the day John Meagher emailed saying that he just lost a volunteer that was covering a 3rd grade class and maybe I should consider that.

That got me thinking about lessons and what topics to try…  with lots of worry about them being truly worthwhile. I think it’s important to introduce the kids to something that they can relate to in their everyday life, not just a neat exercise they saw at school that has no direct real world use.
It’s a lot to ask for.
And maybe, given my lack of experience, it’d be better if I mostly took plans that were already in place so I could concentrate on the actual interaction with the students.  I can build better lessons later.

Www.resetonline.com

A Brighter Future?

Do you think your elementary school students are starting to think of their long-term financial and lifestyle prospects?  The information below may be of use to supplement ReSET volunteers' discussions of what sparked their interest in science and math, their educational background and what they do on the job.  Maybe the students could make a bar chart of salary levels with a bar representing minimum wage salaries as well?   

It can be pretty frustrating for anyone who is hitting the pavement in search of work these days. But it can be particularly daunting for new grads who are inexperienced, burdened with debt, and confronting less than stellar starting salaries in their first jobs.

Take heart.

Not all college graduates face these grim prospects. PayScale’s College Salary Report indicates that engineering degree holders are the top salary earners, offering the quickest return on their educational investment. This spring, a Georgetown University study also gave highest honors to engineering degrees after ranking median salaries by major. In addition, the study revealed that many students in the top-earning majors went on to work within their fields, suggesting that not only will graduates with science and engineering degrees find a job, they will find one that interests them and pays well.  

Below are the 10 college degrees found by PayScale to lead to the highest starting and mid-career salaries:

• Petroleum Engineering

(Median starting salary: $97,000)

• Chemical Engineering

(Median starting salary: $64,500)

• Electrical Engineering

(Median starting salary: $61,300)

• Materials Science and Engineering

(Median starting salary: $60,400)

• Aerospace Engineering

(Median starting salary: $60,700)

• Computer Engineering

(Median starting salary: $61,000)

• Physics

(Median starting salary: $49,800)

• Applied Mathematics

(Median starting salary: $52,600)

• Computer Science

(Median starting salary: $56,600)

• Nuclear Engineering

(Median starting salary: $65,100)

Learn more about these high-paying fields

http://jobs.aol.com/articles/2011/08/22/10-highest-paying-degrees/?icid=maing-grid7%7Cmain5%7Cdl1%7Csec1_lnk2%7C88464

ReSET in action! Chemical Engineer Clarence Wade makes polymer chemistry come alive for 4^th-graders. [www.resetonline.org]