#4 What is science?

Homework

Only SV and JP seemed to be serious enough to go through the homework assignment:

Discussion on Assignment 1: Find and analyze 5 rumors floating on social media. 

SV had a nice list of 6 rumors/controversies that were very relevant to the world and class. Rohan added more 5. Others just noted the rumors/controversies that were already taken up. Lets see how it will turn out on 13th when they have to submit.

Science, what is it?

The idea was to introduce science and discuss on it. Some basic questions were asked, starting from what is science? Someone said its a method of thought, of thinking through. Someone said its a filter. I agreed and passed on to next question. In retrospect this is not how it should have been. The answers were partially honest, but majorly ‘learned’ in previous discussions or in school. An honest question was not asked, and so a honest answer could not be heard. What is science could be a very deep question, the thoughts surrounding it, the sub questions to that question, the contemplation and yearning for going into deeper questions – that would have arrived at a honest, truely felt question. A question that would make one profoundly aware of the lack of knowledge. To seek an answer then would imply missing the point. Maybe this could be explored in next class.

Class recollected how they did science in school, titrations, microscopes. It seems almost all are from NCERT schools with one or two from IB. The texts they were describing seemed well intended, but the teaching was rushed and typical. Fantastic explanations, detailing and depth were discussed as contained in the texts. All this while, I realized that i am the only one from Maharashtra board, so i kept mum for good reason. JP mentioned her IB education where they could choose to pursue a question of their choice, using experiments and reading to get an answer. She described she studied the effect of different colors on germination of seeds, and that was very beautiful to hear. We all in the class thought that this kind of science exploration and learning was unheard of. I went more mum.

On further probing how they felt about science, there was a kind of unfathomable silence in the class. Only a voice here or there fought a desperate lull to leave its source and travel to my ears, someone said he liked it. But the rest searched. It seemed clear they didn’t know how to describe. I put in some expression with my hands in the air, shaking behind the head – and they nodded. Sometimes words cant help. Sad to see such a beautiful subject not being conveyed in all the years of education that these bright active minds went through.

A science experiment

I thought why not use the method of ‘frugal discovery’ on the way to understand science. The method is the one that we’v been using all through now which is simple: ask questions and with whatever little knowledge we have as inputs, try to build up a logical structure through arguments and refinements.

I had thought about a pin hole effect in the class room. The students were just conveyed that we’ll do an experiment, nothing more. Now we are ‘blessed’ with room number 310 which has no windows, but some below the ceiling vents. Thankfully the transparent glass on them was covered with opaque chart paper, except one pane. PK was kind enough to led the class his shawl for covering that pane. Next the door has a small glass window. A cardboard with a small hole into it was used to cover it. Now all bright sources of light were taken care off, so we thought. The moment the lights in the room were switched off, it seemed we had only scratched the surface – there were many light entries and given the less time we could not have possibly covered them all. So, i proceeded anyways. A small screen brought in front of the tiny pin hole revealed an inverted image of the corridor on the other side of the classroom door. Unfortunately only a few students could see the image, or even realize that its an image.

We put on the lights and i asked around what had happened. It was sad that this experiment could not be done to its fullest. I have seen a pinhole image and it looks very surrealistic, inverted and all that. So by now they had figured out that it was a pin hole. PK came on board to sketch how a pinhole forms an image, which was very interesting. Everyone got it – light travels in straight lines and so an image is formed through the hole. We talked about light intensity and how hole size could change that and the blurring of image as a consequence. Then, the topic of lens came around – a confusion between convex and concave ensued. It was clear that there was a lot of ‘learned’ terminology going around, but hardly anyone know what a lens does to its full extent.

I now know that the above experiment’s impact could have been far far more had i planned and executed it fully, what a shame. Hope i will learn and do better next time.

That was that for this session.

Extra Notes

What it means to science? I wish to nudge the students through the following path, but given this is not a science course and each of these will take significant time, i only write it here for reference. Just in case there is time…

1. What do you understand by science so far?
   1. What you remember in science?
   2. The fun parts, the boring parts? why not the dull parts?
   3. Why do we learn science anyways? why was it taught to us in school? Of course it didn’t have this tradition and society backing we have developed now (in this course)?
   4. What fascinates you about the universe?
2. The idea that there is a natural reason rather than an extra-natural cause of things around. That through sequential reasoning we can build up the end-effect we see.
3. That questioning does not necessarily mean challenging, it can also mean better foundation of things we need to believe in.
4. How to science, How do we test for truth ourselves? – discover the following –
   1. How to science: Observation → Hypothesis → Experimentation → Eliminations → Encore → Scientific facts
   2. Repeatibility – across time, space and the doer
   3. The pursuit of Outliers – the real gods of science
   4. Documenting Vs oral traditions
   5. How science looks without the math ?
   6. “Hey it works, even if your science can’t get it !!” – science as an evolving human understanding of things around us.

Eventually we must also touch upon the difference between science and technology!