Hidden Wonders continued from page 70
might want to hear that in 1909 Ernest Rutherford discovered the nucleus of the atom in just this way, which is why the process is called Rutherford backscattering. Advanced students might be intrigued by a second experimental set-up that contains not a Styrofoam star but a Styrofoam depression — a dimple in the bottom board. Suddenly they’ll find that the paths of their marbles don’t bounce back, but are bent on their way through.This dimple, too, can be mapped, but it’s harder. What a great introduction to the idea of gravity as a curve in space-time! Suddenly that deeply abstract concept becomes something they can fiddle with, something they can very nearly touch. But every very young student can learn a lot from the star made of Styrofoam. Imagine setting third graders loose on such a project. Can they map the star? Perhaps not: the geometry
might well be beyond them. But imagine letting them compare the hidden star with marbles bounced off objects they can see. Quickly they’ll learn the differences between marbles bounced off a cube and marbles bounced off a hemisphere. Between a cube and a triangle. Between a large hemisphere and a small one.They could even begin to imagine the limits of scientific knowledge: if a sphere is hollow, there is no way for the marbles to know. I believe that even very young children can and should learn to think this way. Given enough time and fiddling, they can learn to gather evidence, build mental models, compare, test, predict. They can learn the power of indirect observation. If you doubt that, imagine telling a classroom full of kids who just bounced marbles off a hidden star for an hour that there is nothing under the board.They won’t believe you.They may not be able to prove the existence of the hidden star absolutely, but they will be sure of their evidence. Just listen
to them argue.These are the children our scientific society needs.These are the children who will meet news of a new discovery not with bitterness, but with wonder. Science isn’t a body of facts. It’s our best guess, put into the shape of models. Many of these models work very, very well, but we know that there are places where they fail. We know we don’t know everything. At Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, where I work, I have a colleague who used to exchange letters with Einstein.The very first from Einstein begins this way:“Our situation is the following. We are standing in front of a closed box which we cannot open, and we try hard to discuss what is inside and what is not.” We owe it to our students to share this sense of wonder. Greg Dick is the Director of Educational Outreach at Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics. For more information visit www. perimeterinstitute.ca.
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