IAN was a delight: Bright as a button with a laconic dry but kindly sense of humour, he helped to make every day in the classroom a challenge. His first-class intelligence made keeping up with him no mean feat. Fortunately, like Ian, I had a scientific bent, too.
None of that rather wishy-washy Nature Study in my classroom! We studied Science.
Carefully, through many vivid experiences, I had built up the powers of observation and problem solving techniques in my students. We learned about science and the world around us by actually doing things.
Momentum was illustrated in an exhilarating way as students of varying sizes billy-carted down the asphalt slope behind the school. Gravity became something more than a theory by Galileo or Newton when we took a box of objects to the local park, dropped each one in free-fall from the top of the slide and stopwatched the precise time each object took to fall to earth. Then, we timed their descent down the slide's incline. We discovered and noted a few strange things. A blown-up balloon, a feather and a ball of screwed-up paper were obviously affected by factors other than just gravity. Every other object fell straight to the ground or rolled more or less straight down the slide. The balloon,
the feather and the paper-ball did not. So, the more eager students sketched the various trajectories on their work pads and discussed and compared them.
Everyone was seeking the answer to an unspoken question: What had made those three items stray from their downward path and act so differently? Naturally, Ian had a suggestion.
"It's got something to do with aerodynamics, I think, Miss."
"What's aerodynamics, Ian?" a classmate asked.
"I don't exactly know," Ian said,
"But I’ll look it up tonight and tell you tomorrow."
The confidence of youth!
The arrival of Public Works' men, replacing fluorescent tubes in classrooms, presented us with just the raw materials we needed to explore Ian's theories on aerodynamics. dozens of long cardboard boxes which had held the tubes. We all became inventors and tried to design and construct effective gliders from the mountainous collection of empty boxes. Limits and standards were set so that we were all faced with the
same conditions: Nothing could be added to the box, but it could be cut, folded, bent or twisted in any way desired. We spent the whole afternoon launching our gliders from our classroom's upstairs' windows and timing and watching their descents. It was Ian who had pointed out that just timing the descents was not enough. He thought that there were other factors we should be noting: things which added to the quality
of the flight of the gliders: the lift gained; the turns accomplished and the actual distances travelled. We took his advice. It soon became evident that some unknown factor was interfering with our experiment.
"Something" would grab and lift our gliders, without any apparent reason, moving them outside our expectations of direction or distance.
"Thermals!" said Ian knowingly.
We certainly learned a lot about aerodynamics and thermals that day!
Then there was our study of magnetism. The magnets supplied from the Science Room were soon found to be frustratingly faint-hearted and feeble. We went hunting for stronger magnets: ones with a bit of vigour to them. Tan arrived with a real beauty. It was huge and so heavy that you could only lift it with great difficulty, even with both hands. It was a strange shape: a little like a fat foot with truncated toes. Ian had located it in a wrecker's yard and had charmed the workers into letting him have it for school. We looked at it in admiration. Was this a magnet!! When I leant forward to examine it, the hair pins flew out of my hair and my thick plait descended dramatically over my shoulders. That caused quite a sensation, but more was in store for us. Pictures on the wall near the magnet fell to the floor and their drawing pins dashed through the air to meet our latest piece of scientific equipment. Experiments carried out with iron filings to determine magnetic fields were spectacular. The filings actually stood up on end and raced across the paper to the north pole of our monster. We had a terrible time getting the iron filings back into their container. They just did not want to leave the magnet. One helpful student tried to scrape them off with scissors. Another tried a knife. All we succeeded in doing was to magnetise the scissors and the knife. They became heavily bearded with iron filings. Fun! Then we played "races” with matchbox cars on a table. We placed the by now furry magnet on a chair under the middle of the table. All the cars raced to the middle of the table, smashing together into a heap of metal. If we moved the chair, and therefore the magnet, the heap of cars writhed grotesquely as they tried to answer the new demands of their master. The day was full of discoveries. Anyone with a watch which was not antimagnetic made another discovery later on. The precise time they had come into close contact with the magnet was registered on their
watches, because they stopped right there!
One terribly hot and humid summer afternoon, far too late in the day to expect very much from my students, we were half-heartedly exploring musical tones and pitch, using a metallo-phone and a xylophone. Concentration and interest had definitely dissipated as time passed. It had been replaced by something resembling total apathy or lethargy as most of my students succumbed to the unbearable weather. Only Ian remained attentive, responding to changes in pitch or tone with unfailing accuracy.
"Thank goodness someone has been listening properly," I remarked as the dismissal bell rang. No-one responded until, after a long silent pause, Ian cocked his head on one side and held his hand to one ear, like an old man with an ear trumpet, and said, with a wicked grin on his face, "Eh? What?" which certainly managed to tickle my funny-bone.
During the year, the students had learned to apply their powers of observation and deduction in many problem-solving situations, attempting to identify substances or find reasons for physical or chemical behaviour. We had devised a standard procedure to apply when trying to identify unknown substances. We would observe it carefully with our eyes, noting its characteristics and remembering things it reminded us of. Then each of our other senses would be used in the same way. Smelling the substance carefully, we would systematically go through our mental store of facts and experiences, trying to match things up. Then we'd touch it, noting whether its texture gave us any new information or supported any hypothesis or deduction we were working on. Finally, if sight, smell and touch had not sent out any danger signals, we would tentatively taste the substance, trying to use all our gathered information and guess work to pose a hypothesis on what the substance might be. Having come that far, we would then devise a suitable test to prove or disprove our educated guesswork.
I prepared a test for each student: a sealed envelope containing an unknown substance. Their task would be to use their skills to pose a hypothesis as to what this substance was and then to try to prove it, by devising a test to confirm the hypothesis. With all his many scientific skills, Ian was quite sure that he would solve his "problem" first. He let us all know that he intended to win; to finish in the shortest time. I
thought that perhaps it was time to deflate Ian's ego just a little. I set him up.
That night, at home, I prepared the test: 35 sealed envelopes, each individually numbered, each containing a different common substance. I made a master list of the numbers and the corresponding substances. For safety sake, I left the list at home. No-one was going to get the answer the easy way: by cheating. Inside the envelopes were 35 harmless powders or crystals from my pantry or kitchen or bathroom. Number 29 was rather special. THAT was the envelope specially prepared for Ian. This was not flour or sugar or cleanser or pepper. This is something a little different. I had carefully coloured some ordinary sugar with green food colouring. Then I had flavoured in with a few drops of lime essence. It was really quite a good imitation. Those innocent green crystals DID look and smell and feel and taste just like lime jelly crystals!
On the day of the tests, I stood at the table with the 35 envelopes in a shoe box. A student mixed them up and turned hem all face down.
Then the students queued up and each took an envelope from the shoe box.
A little devious sleight-of-hand ensured that Number 29 went to Ian. All 35 enthusiastic students opened their envelopes and set to work. There they were busily looking, sniffing, touching and tentatively tasting THEIR substance, and recording their findings and comments. Before long, hypotheses were being jotted down and experiments to test these were being devised and considered. Ian was delighted with the thought of how easy it would be to prove HIS hypothesis.
I could not resist asking him, “What do you think it is, Ian?"
“Lime jelly crystals, Miss," he informed me with confidence. How do you intend to prove that?" I asked.
“Easy, Miss. I'll just put it in a dish and add some boiling water, stir it and leave it to set,” he informed me.
"Will you help me to get some boiling water, please, Miss. And I guess I'd better put it in the fridge to help it set."
"No problem, Ian," I smiled.
Ian went off to lunch with his "jelly" already in the staffroom refrigerator. He had a look at it after lunch and told me,
"It must be too soon, Miss. It's not set yet."
Neither was it set at afternoon recess nor just before home time.
"Oh well. I guess it'll be set in the morning," he told me before he went home. He was not very happy.
Two of his classmates had already handed in their solutions, their assignments completed.
In the morning, Ian came into the room carrying the dish of green liquid from the refrigerator.
"There's something wrong, Miss. It hasn't set!" he complained and, innocently, I replied,
"Why do you think it hasn't set, Ian?"
"Perhaps I did something wrong," he admitted. "I'll try it again I think, Miss," and he returned to his envelope for more of the bright green crystals. With great care and concentration, he looked at them, sniffed them, rubbed them between his thumb and forefinger and finally tasted them. He nodded his head, as though agreeing with some idea of his.
"Yes, Miss. It's definitely jelly crystals!"
Once again we went to the staffroom for boiling water. Ian was VERY careful this time. He washed the dish and dried it thoroughly before he spooned the crystals into it. (He'd washed the spoon, too.) He added just a little boiling water and stirred and stirred.
"I might have put in too much water last time, Miss, or not have stirred it properly," he confided.
He left the mixture to cool until recess time. Then, he covered the dish with Gladwrap.
"To make sure it isn't contaminated by anything else, Miss," he explained and placed the dish very carefully in the refrigerator with a smile, saying, "That should do it."
Just before home time, he went to check on his experiment. He returned to the classroom, without the dish and without comment, with this rather grim and determined look on his face. When he had gone home, I checked in the refrigerator. Ian's dish was not there. I thought for a moment and then opened the freezer.
Sure enough, there was the dish!
Before I went home, 1 made up a little lime jelly in another dish (Yes, I had come prepared.) and put it in the refrigerator next to Ian's dish. I labelled each dish carefully.
In the morning, Ian and I went to the refrigerator. The contents of his dish were frozen hard. So were the contents of mine. But, Ian had to admit that the two frozen blocks did not look quite the same. Mine was hard but also had a jellied texture. And the colour was not the same. In his sample, little slivers of ice crystals were clearly visible.
"Well, Ian," I enquired. "What do you think?"
"My substance is NOT lime jelly crystals, Miss. That's obvious. As a matter of fact, Miss, I think I've been had. By you, Miss. "
"Could be, Ian," I admitted.
"I don't have to ask why, Miss," he told me. "I think I know."
He shook his head and looked at me quizzically.
"Why do you think I did it, Ian?" I asked him.
"To teach me something, Miss."
"What?"
"Two things, Miss. Not to jump to conclusions and not to be such a big-head, I guess," he confided.
"Spot on, Ian!" I congratulated him. "There's certainly nothing wrong with your powers of deduction."
There was silence for a few seconds. Ian was obviously thinking and perhaps suffering a little.
"Can you forgive me for doing it? I know it wasn't very nice of me but I felt it needed to be done," I explained. Ian grinned at me, the twinkle back in his eyes again.
"It's O. K., Miss. You know I'd have done the same to you if I'd thought you'd needed it. Still might, one day."
Leaving me to try to work out exactly what that meant, Ian went back to the classroom to get on with his scientific experiment. Using the last teaspoonful of his mystery substance and his impressive collection of scientific skills, he soon had his test completed. His finished assignment said it all.
View the following to marvel at what he handed in :
OBSERVATIONS:
SIGHT: Looks like lime jelly crystals.
SMELL: Smells like lime jelly crystals.
TOUCH: Feels like lime jelly crystals
TASTE: Tastes like lime jelly crystals.
PROJECTED HYPOTHESIS: My substance is lime jelly crystals.
EXPERIMENT TO TEST HYPOTHESIS:
Mix as for jelly and mixture will set.
RESULT: It didn't. Tried again. Still didn't set. Froze mixture.
Compared it with real frozen jelly sample. Texture and appearance of my sample is quite different from
the real thing
CONCLUSION: It can't be lime jelly crystals.
NEXT ACTION PROPOSED: Open mind and consider other options.
Ian did, and he set up a hypothesis and successfully proved exactly what substance Number 29 was.
His final result proved both his persistence and his scientific skill.
As his assignment stated :
RESULT: My substance is sugar crystals dyed with green food colouring, flavoured with lime essence or food flavouring.
CONCLUSION:
1. My teacher set me up. Like an idiot, I fell into the trap she'd set.
2. My substance was sugar crystals coloured with food dye, flavoured with lime essence.
3. Jumping to conclusions is a dangerous practice. Before selecting a working hypothesis, you must be
careful to consider a wide range of options before selecting the most likely.
4. Thank you for improving my scientific skills, Miss. (No hard feelings. )
Yes. Ian did become a scientist.
He is currently working on research, in the field of genetic engineering.