If we at stable bow were to live by a motto this quote by Albert Einstein would aptly describe what we are trying to do, every day in the children we connect with.
When Sherwood high told us about the science day that they planned to celebrate in school we jumped at the chance to share with the parents the journey we had undertaken with their children over the academic year we were with them.
We shared our vision of running the event as a show, where the children could present a concept to parents and also have stalls to ensure parents could interact with the children and see how the concepts were taught to them.
To see the children get in touch with their inner showman was heart-warming as we could see the children progressively getting more and more comfortable as they spent more time on the stage. Why is that whales can dive to a feet of 3500mtrs while humans can only go upto 330mtrs? The application of pascal’s law ( liquids are incompressible) and Boyle’s law(relationship between pressure and volume of a gas) to explain this natural phenomenon was something that parents could truly appreciate. Even though these concepts were something all had learned in a textbook the way the children presented in a bold, engaging, fun way drove home the point of the wonder of science around us.
The stalls were arranged as per the different topics covered in class and each stall manned by a group of children explaining the concept to the visitors.
Friction and counterintuitive thought process of turning left to go right was explained by race track that was setup to demonstrate that when traveling on loose gravel, encountering a patch of ice on the road, or hitting a turn too fast — the rear tyres lose their grip on the road. If that happens, then as you steer into the turn, the rear of the car will over-rotate in the direction of the turn, causing it to go into a spin. To compensate for this, you have to turn the front tyres away from the spin, or opposite to the direction of your turn. Thus turning left to go right made perfect sense!
Kublai khan and his troops decide to invade Chinese Song dynasty that have highly fortified cities, and so getting the children to build catapults by keeping in mind what they learned in their lesson on projectile motion, keeping the angle of launch at 45 deg, was another of the projects that the children demonstrated to the visitors.
The pendulum wave demonstration explained clearly Galileo’s findings that no matter what the angle of displacement, the time for the pendulum to come back to its original state was the same. Also, when the mass was increased and other factors like length and angle of displacement was same the period stayed the same.
Mission to mars was all about launching rockets and calculating the angle of release which would ensure the maximum distance travelled by the rocket. The excitement of the children as rockets shot through the air, seeing whose would travel further was something that ensured the audience also got pulled into the narrative.
The science day in the end wasn’t about how much definitions children could spew out, or the quality of the different exhibits (they were made by children, who were using everyday items around us to tinker!!)it was a chance to demonstrate the depth of learning that was possible through learning by doing, quality of questions posed to spark curiosity and finally the power of storytelling even if you choose to become a deep scientist!
Real life problem solving for children 