Explaining true experiment to a 13-year-old

Let's start with a Twitter Joke:
Conversation over breakfast.
ME: Whoa, you lost another tooth?
A: Yes!
ME: Why didn't you tell me?
A: I'm conducting an experiment. If I lose a tooth and don't tell anyone, will the tooth fairy still come? If not, then I know the tooth fairy isn't real.
ME: ...
HUSBAND: 😮

A small introduction to true experiments

True experiments involve changing one variable and then measuring another.

A variable is any factor, trait, or condition that can exist in differing amounts or types.

The two main variables in an experiment are the independent and dependent variable.

An independent variable is a variable that is changed or controlled in a scientific experiment to test the effects on the dependent variable.

A dependent variable is a variable being tested and measured in a scientific experiment.

Independent variable: Cause
Dependent variable: Effect
The researcher is looking for the possible effect on the dependent variable that might be caused by changing the independent variable.

Only one change is made at a time, and results are checked.  

The Experiment

Hypothesis:

Test whether the reason for water droplets in polythene bag containing a plant is: leaves



Here two variables are:
1) Dependable variable: Formation of water droplets in a polythene bag.
2) Independent variable:  Cutting out different parts of a plant (leaves, stem, root).

Collect different kinds of herbaceous plants with its root attached, such are a rose, basil (tulsi), marigold, croton etc.

Why is control group used?
The presence of a control group helps scientists rule out alternate causes for any observed results.
Negative control groups exhibited no effects when compared to the treatment group.
Positive control group exhibits a specific expected effect.

We take a positive control group with polythene bag containing the real whole plant.
And a negative control group with polythene bag containing a fake plastic plant.

Now we modify the independent variable, i.e. remove a part of a plant, and check what happens to the dependant variable, that is whether water droplets in the polythene bag are formed or not.

The experiment gave the following results.

No leaves, no water droplets

No root with water droplets
No stem with water droplets


Inquiry and Argumentation: 

Does the experiment supports your hypothesis i.e. is your hypothesis true?
How do you know leaves contributed to most of the water droplets in polythene bag?

Do you think other parts of the plant also contributed to the production of water droplets in the polythene bag?

How do you know stem is not the reason for the production of water droplets?

Imagine, it was root, not the leaves that produced water droplets. What will be the results of the experiment? Modify the diagram, showing that root was producing water droplets.

How do you know it was a part of a plant that was producing water droplets, and water droplets didn't come from the air? Explain it using the importance of positive and negative control group.

What if water produced in polythene bag was much more or much less than the water produced in the positive control group?

If the experiment has failed to produce the water droplets, what conclusion will you draw and why?

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular Posts

Suggestions for changes in lessons of NCERT Chemistry book

Image
Chemistry Book: NCERT Chemistry book requires a complete reinvention, with eliminating most units that are unrequired at the higher secondary level and making it more systematic with the flow of information and building new connections by using prior information. e.g. How quantum mechanical model is linked with explaining the properties of elements and molecules? And before explaining the quantum mechanical model, it's needed to explain what are model and theories. From Britannica: Scientific modeling, the generation of a physical, conceptual, or mathematical representation of a real phenomenon that is difficult to observe directly. Scientific models are  used to explain and predict the behavior of real objects  or systems and are used in a variety of scientific disciplines. The Higher secondary level is meant to know the basics first with the foundational understanding of the mechanism of concepts in detail. It should be relevant to students day to day life to know the...
Read more

Universal Basic Income and Education: A beginning to a continued resilient human ecosystem

Image
Universal Basic Income is a welfare regime in which all citizens (or permanent residents) of a country receive a regular, liveable and unconditional sum of money, from the government. The central claim that UBI tries to solve is the end of poverty and financial insecurity by the indsicriminatory supply of free money which can be exchanged to buy your basic need requirements. But the problem lies with execution and design that nullify the damaging possibilities speculated by the critics. Speculation: It disincentivizes people to work, so can create an adverse condition for wealth creation. A proposed elaborative solution: Morally, the basic required need for survival such as food, clothing, shelter are not incentives. Its a fundamental right of the people. But biologically, these are the incentives to pacify our hunger or appetite. Food, clothing, shelter are basic needs for survival, but we need lot more for thriving. One of the essentials to thrive is education that nouris...
Read more

If all scientific discovery relies on peer review for validation, why not assessment be done through peer review?

Image
All scientific discovery relies on peer review for validation, Why not the assessment of schools and colleges be done through peer review? Peer Review definition: evaluation of scientific, academic, or professional work by others working in the same field. In case of open peer review, the reviewer reports are published which can again go through auditing. Benefits of open peer review: 1) Feedback to the students After a test, feedback to the student becomes a crucial part of their learning. Feedback can be in many forms such as detailed corrections of the answers, making their misconceptions corrected for a particular concept, identifying their specific problems and asking them to take necessary steps to improve. 2) Time-saving of teachers As this can be done in a collaborative manner, it will give freedom to any teacher from the respective subjects to annotate the assessments, the burden is no more to the individual teacher, it will be shared among the country or worl...
Read more

How making an aahaar api can revolutionize India in providing personalized and accurate information?

Every citizen of India has Unique Identification Number: Aadhaar. Many websites in health care, railways and almost all sites use your personal details. But the problem is, some times these personal details can be inaccurate. There can be many reasons for it. e.g. Storing the birth data of child in eMunicipality portal: The nurse writes about Mother and Father details in a form. From between writing the form to feeding it into the eMunicipality portal, there are lots of chances of feeding wrong data. Some of the reasons are: 1) Listening error of nurse, so the nurse write the wrong information 2) Laziness and lack of time for nurse to fill all the fields on the paper form 3) Spelling errors of name and address details. 4) Person who is doing data entry in eMunicipality portal unable to recognize the handwriting (as we all know doctors write in horrible handwriting, which an expert can only read) 5) Person who is doing data entry, fills the compulsory field with arbitrary dat...
Read more

What if we limit the expression of these two important words: Share and Adapt?

Image
Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) You are free to: Share — copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format Adapt — remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercially. What happens when you limit the voicing of these two important words? 1) Nescience : (Ignorance is a lack of knowledge) Our eyes and senses are limited by many ways. We are adapted to view the world perfectly only at a particular zooming level . The world becomes blurred when we increase or decrease the zooming level. We can't know what is happening in another country just by our senses. Increasing and decreasing the zooming level requires indirect measurements that are tedious and sophisticated. You need to learn the outcomes of the research, and techniques to make measurements by bringing it down to texts and tools that are compatible with our zooming level. Without sharing these texts, using and adapting it, our knowledge will be limited to our zooming...
Read more

Aadhaar: It's time to encrypt all biometric data with password

All biometric data should be encrypted. During authentication, the user needs to provide both aadhar number and password. So only the user can decrypt and access the biometric data. Biometrics of the little finger can be kept in the unencrypted form, to remove duplicates. In case you forget the password: One has to submit the aadhaar number and little finger biometrics to obtain another. The ciphertext of aadhaar number should be replaced with new ciphertext (obtained from new password) In case you lost both (Password and Aadhaar Number): The person must come under scrutiny and old aadhaar number should be removed by using his/her little finger, and new aadhaar number can be given. To change the password: Enter the old password and aadhaar number, match the ciphertext with your fingerprint and then replace the ciphertext with new password. All the steps should be done in aadhaar center. The python code: from Crypto.Cipher import AES obj = AES.new('Aadhaar No:123...
Read more

All books that don't meet the learning criteria must be taken off

Image
Learning About Learning Resources https://github.com/amiyatulu/teacher_resources Textbook must cover six fundamental instructional strategies while presenting the information, defined by rigorous research. 1) Pairing graphics with words 2) Linking abstract concepts with concrete representations Why we face difficulty to remember abstract concepts? http://technoperiod.blogspot.in/2017/03/why-we-face-difficulty-to-remember-non.html 3)  Posing probing questions "What Makes a Great Question?" rubric Why, how, what if, how do you know, what are the evidences What if and why not helps you to find alternatives to a solution 4) Repeatedly alternating problems with their solutions provided and problems that students must solve. Interleaving  and Component Practice  can be used for better transfer of learning with appropriate cognitive load. 5) Distributing practice 6) Assessing to boost retention Detailed explanation of the strategies i...
Read more

How much does retrieval practice help in learning?

Image
Students do forget things, we measure the effectiveness of the retrieval practice based upon how much they have remembered it.  But forgetting doesn't mean that students have unlearned what they have learned. Neither learning means remembering things. Paul Hewitt Physics Yes, the best strategy to get a high score is retrieval practice. But high score relies on the ability to recall things, not test the actual learning. We need not have to do retrieval practice to do programming,  just re-reading and using the code is enough. The best way to learn to program is to use and apply it the hard way. The more you use it and apply better strategies, the more better your programming skill will be. The same principle applies to all subjects, whether its maths, physics, biology or philosophy. What is required is understanding of the subject, through strategies like the Feynman Technique. Understanding creates an index in your brain, which later can be used to retrieve...
Read more

PISA sample question: Why I was unable to solve a question?

In a test, it's important to know the thinking process of a student, why a student is able to solve a problem and most importantly why he/she COULDN'T. If you understand why he/she couldn't do in details, you can address his/her problem and take corrective measure. TEST QUESTIONS (LEVEL 5) CLIMBING MOUNT FUJI Mount Fuji is a famous dormant volcano in Japan. QUESTION: The Gotemba walking trail up Mount Fuji is about 9 kilometres (km) long. Walkers need to return from the 18 km walk by 8 pm. Toshi estimates that he can walk up the mountain at 1.5 kilometres per hour on average, and down at twice that speed. These speeds take into account meal breaks and rest times. Using Toshi's estimated speeds, what is the latest time he can begin his walk so that he can return by 8 pm? The answer says 11 a.m., but the problem with me is understanding the question itself. I didn't know the meaning of trail, so I checked the dictionary,  which says a long line or se...
Read more