Creative Thinking in Nature of Science PART A (iv)

Part A (iv) Creative Thinking in the Nature of Science – How might you design an investigation?

Creative thinking is required to imagine multiple ways to investigate an hypothesis.

How might you explore? Scientists have to come up with many ideas on how to investigate their questions using different research techniques and knowledge/ technology available.

Scientists use creative thinking to imagine multiple ways to design an investigation and reflect on whether their design will measure what they intended to find.

In the best science investigations, its not the questions that are most creative, but rather how the experiment is measured and how the data is interpreted.

How might you design an investigation?
It is important in science education for students to learn the science inquiry skills and processes to develop a deeper conceptual science understanding. However, if students only have the opportunity to perform guided / recipe experiments then they are limited to explore and construct their own explanations for their investigable questions. A worthwhile objective for teaching science is to allow students to think and act like scientists, by designing their own investigations, using open ended inquiry, rather than to solely learn or replicate what other scientists have already done.

Seeing there is more than one scientific method provides meaning for how students see the investigation as a component in understanding a scientific problem.

Dudley Herschbach said, “People thought it would not be feasible. It was called the lunatic fringe of chemistry, which I just loved.” He ignored his critics, and set out to see what would happen if he crossed a beam of molecules such as chlorine with a beam of hydrogen atoms. He spent several years collecting his data, which in the end uncovered new insights into the ways colliding molecules behave. In 1986 Dudley Herschbach and Yuan Lee were awarded the Nobel Prize "for their contributions concerning the dynamics of chemical elementary processes."

Disney's Dumbo the flying elephant is magical to watch. Last night I took my son to see the 2019 movie.

Imagination - What if an elephant could fly? How could you design a model to show your scientific thinking?

Imagine you designed a model of Dumbo. In order to achieve take off what might the wing span of Dumbo’s ear have to be if a baby elephant weighs about 90 to 100 kilograms. What other questions would you need to consider?
For example: Which type of elephant would you base your model on because it would be the most aerodynamic? Which elephant shape is more streamlined? How might you explore this idea? What investigation could you try? Which is your best idea?
Which things (variables) will you keep constant? What factor (variable) will you measure?

I was wondering how they made the elephant bubbles when I was watching the movie. (Was it special effects?)
Is it possible to make animal shape bubbles? How might you explore this phenomena? How many different ideas have you come up with?

The official trailer for Dumbo https://youtu.be/7NiYVoqBt-8