Scientific Thinking, Educated and Not-so-Educated Guesses

Based on my 11 yo daughter’s ICSE books, I feel they are far better for learning than the CBSE ones I grew up on. The science books, for one, will describe easy-to-understand experiments to prove various concepts. I guess this model works, because I find my daughter will have (surprisingly sensible) queries on some of those experiments.

 

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Like the Chemistry chapter on the states of matter. To prove gases can be compressed, it asked to take a toy injection. Seal the nozzle, it said. There’s still some air in the injection. Press the plunger down next, it said. Since the plunger went down and the air had nowhere to go, it proves that the air must have gotten compressed, it concluded.

 

The same chapter had a less satisfactory experiment to prove that gases occupy space. Invert a glass into a trough of water, it said. The water rises up into the glass, but only up to a point. Why only till that point? Because the air above it occupies space (and prevents the water from rising further), it concluded.

 

I was happy to see my daughter combine the two experiments in her head. With the plunger in the injection, the gas could be compressed so much, she said. Why then can’t the liquid in the 2nd experiment compress the gas and rise even further, she asked. The answer involved forces balancing out (gravity v/s attempt to compress), but that would be too complicated for now. But I was glad she asked.

 

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Then there was the Biology chapter that tried to prove that respiration produces carbon dioxide. Put an organism and a bowl of lime water in a glass container, it said. Over time, the lime water will turn milky, proof that CO2 was produced as a by-product of respiration, it announced.

 

But, asked my daughter, the air in the container had some CO2 in it to begin with. How can we know whether the CO2 that turned the lime water milky came from the air or from the organism, she asked? I was impressed - she’s thinking of alternate explanations for the observation.

 

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The Physics chapter on light was describing why eclipses occur. It mentioned that a solar eclipse occurs on a New Moon Day (i.e., when the moon isn’t visible). My daughter countered: if you can’t even see the moon on that day, how do you know it was causing the solar eclipse, she asked. Ah kiddo, I thought, you just got a peek into how most of astrophysics is done – you infer things and draw logical conclusions about things you can’t see.

 

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The same Physics chapter on light defined a real image (one that can be projected/captured on a screen). But it didn’t define a virtual image. Yet, the back of the book had a question asking what a virtual image is. My daughter took a stab at it, “Is a virtual image an online image?”

 

I was amused by how her generation think everything “virtual” is synonymous with the Internet.

 

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Sometimes a guess can be wrong, but not dumb (like the one above). At other times though… Like this kid in her class who was asked who Tulsidas was. The kid doesn’t know, but tried connecting the dots in her head, “It’s a plant (tulsi)”, she answered. Poor kid! She became the laughing stock of the class. It got so bad that she complained to the teacher. She had come to the wrong place for sympathy. “So Tulsidas is a plant, eh?”, mocked the teacher, implying that if you think that, you probably deserve everything that happens to you.

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