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As one with not enough work to do, allow me to insert my $0.02....

-----Original Message-----
From: Ed Sobey [mailto:[log in to unmask]] 

I'm amazed that few people (museum visitors, staff,
professional teachers) can watch a car roll down a ramp and report what
happened.  They just can't do it.  (After a few pointed questions they can
do it, but its' tough to get them to observe and report). If you can't
observe and report, you can't do science.  This is what should be going on
in science centers - "Science"  - the action verb.  It is what we need.

After engaging people to do something and getting them observe (accurately)
and report, they must be able to ascribe some causes to the effects they
observed.  Few can do this.  ("God made it go that way," "I'm not good at
science," are typical responses from kids when asked by their car, boat, or
rocket veered to one side).
==================================

Ed - I agree with most of what you said, but part of it (especially the part
above) brings up a li'l aphorism: "Specific questions yield specific
answers." I agree with what you say about the need for better engaging the
visitors, better presenting true science as opposed to a factoid blitz
etc... but I'm not sure exactly what you think would help us do these things
more effectively. Your argument speaks in general/theoretical terms - can
you give some examples of presenting science well (or poorly)?

And that's how a visitor might feel. Take your car + ramp example. You say
most folks just can't report what happened? I'll take a stab at it: The car
rolled down the ramp. Is that an accurate/good enough report?

If not, why not? What was it you wanted? A talk on the conversion of
potential energy to kinetic energy? A description of the role gravity
played, or friction or inertia? An explanation of simple machines (like the
wheel + axle, or for that matter the inclined plane of the ramp)? A more
precise description - like the length of the ramp, its height and how long
it took the car to descend?

I'm cautious about the cause/effect part too. I'm leery of signage/museum
staff (or, just as often, parents of kids) who ask "Why do you think that
happened?" I think that it's a perfectly valid answer to say "I don't know".


Exhibits isn't my field of expertise by any means... but I know, for
example, there are things that I can do as an outreach presentation in a
school that are simply harder to do in an exhibit at a science center. Here,
I'll get specific.

I have a chemistry class that (pardon my horn-tooting) I think does a pretty
good job of including the scientific method, as well as the raw facts about
chemical reactions. This would be tough to do in an exhibit. Why?

For starters, it's not necessarily an easy thing. It helps the students to
have a person there who can answer questions and guide them to the next step
if they get stuck. (And we can do this by saying "Let's find out by running
another experiment, like so..." rather than flat out giving an answer.) Yet
when the inevitable budget crunch happens at your center, isn't staffing the
first thing to get the axe cause it's so expensive? Getting people on the
floor full time is darn difficult, at least for us at the smaller centers.

And I'll hypothesize that the reason so many exhibits are under glass/push a
button/not actually interactive is that kids make a colossal mess and
destroy things at a mind-boggling pace. Try doing an unsupervised exhibit
with chemicals and watch your migraines begin. Let's not even get started on
the safety issue.

I'm not saying it can't be done. It just seems to me that better
understanding of science (the active verb) in addition to science (the
collection of facts) is essential for understanding (oh yeah, and ultimately
for combating nonsense like ID). We grok this, we just have to start
tackling the specifics of overcoming the barriers to doing it.

Or something like that.

Jonah Cohen
Outreach & Public Programs Manager
Science Center of Connecticut

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