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Hello, my name is Mike. I teach in the public school system in Birmingham, Alabama. This year's topics include Physics, Physical Science, and Principles of Technology. 93-94 will be my 11th year in the high school classroom. I am currently branching out to include environmental awareness topics to my interactions with my students. On the first day of school I give each student a 6 inch ruler and ask then to determine the volume of my classroom. The room is sort of pie shaped (the building is round), but irregularly shaped would be a better description. It has about 1500 sq. ft of floor space and an 8 foot ceiling. I'm not sure of the volume, but it is a big room, a former shop. Most students will have trouble getting started. Too many can't read an inch based ruler. So we have a talk about fractions and 32'nds of an inch. Some students are already measuring the walls and taking notes. Others get up and start going around the room placing their ruler on the walls. Some pair up and use 2 rulers and discover such measuring is more than twice as fast (synergy sometimes gets discussed in small groups as I float around the room.) So now lots of people have lots of numbers. Raw data. Some have to be reminded about multiplying to find area. But what is the width? This room is oddly shaped. I let them try whatever they come up with and refuse to tell them " What the real volume of the room is supposed to be". Some calculate it out to the nearest cubic centimeter. But they soon see that there is wide variation between answers. I ask them to see by what percent their answers vary with another. What is the average answer. " But mine is so much different I must have made a mistake, should we include it in finding the average?" Discussions about reasonable data come up. Then I ask for how we might estimate the volume. Silence. Few people are concerned or aware of the volume of their space. No prior knowledge for comparison. How do we make judgments? After several such discussions I invite them to LOOK at the ceiling and describe what they see. ( It is a drop in ceiling made of 2 x 4 foot panels ). Look at the floor . It is a grid of 1 ft square tiles. GIANT graph paper, really. ( By the way, it does serve well as graph paper when working with vectors and forces on someone in a rolling chair being pulled by 2 ropes). Could we count the tiles and get an area ? How about the walls ? Exterior walls are masonry, 8" block... Hmmm... Now we can do a quick and reasonable estimate. The student who was closest gets Newton's birthday off from class. Ring... there goes the bell... see you tomorrow.... |
