SCIENCE EXPERIMENTS

RESEARCH FINDING:

Children learn science best when they are able to do experiments, 
so they can witness "science in action."

COMMENT:

Reading  about scientific principles or having a teacher  explain 
them is frequently not enough.   Cause and effect are not  always 
obvious,  and it may take an experiment to make that clear.   Ex-
periments help children actually see how the natural world works.

Scientific  explanations sometimes conflict with the way students 
may suppose that things happen or work.   For example,  most stu-
dents  would  probably think that a basketball will  fall  faster 
than a ping-pong ball because the basketball is larger and  heav-
ier.   Unless  a  teacher corrects this intuitive  assumption  by 
having  the  students perform an experiment and see the  results, 
the students will continue to trust their intuition,  even though 
the  textbook or the teacher tells them the effect of gravity  on 
both  objects  is exactly the same and that both will  reach  the 
floor at the same instant.

Many  students  have misconceptions even after taking  a  science 
course  because they have not had opportunities to test and  wit-
ness  the evidence that would change their minds.   To  clear  up 
misconceptions,  students  need to be given the chance to predict 
the results they anticipate in an experiment.   For example,  the 
mistaken idea that the basketball will fall faster than the ping-
pong  ball can be tested experimentally.   The teacher  can  then 
explain  why  the original hypothesis was faulty.   In  this  way 
experiments  help  students use the scientific method to  distin-
guish facts from opinions and misconceptions. 


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