Friday, April 08, 2005
"A paperclip can be a wondrous thing."
Every so often I have a moment of brilliance with my students. It's extremely rare, but there are moments where everything works out and my demonstrations actually succeed in engaging student interest.
Ironically, the latest addition to my list of teaching triumphs occurred outside the classroom. I was lending a hand at Underwood's after-school tutoring program. The regular staff is an English teacher and an algebra teacher. They're the ones who show up everyday and get paid for their trouble. I normally am around after school anyway so I like to drop by and help out. But this week has been odd due to state-mandated testing, so the crowds were small and even my students had very little immediate homework.
Which meant it was time for the Invisible Ben to work on another one of his famous experiments. This week I had done a mini-unit on magnets and figured that the best way to end it would be an experiment my father showed my friends and I while we were doing Young Astronauts in fourth grade. The idea, in short, was to build a motor. Dad's design used a cork, several feet of enameled wire, a wooden base, one ceramic magnet, some tacks, and a pair of paperclips. Unfortunately, this weekend, I did not have a large amount of time to assemble kits for all my classes, or even for groups of four. I needed something else.
Which led to some research, a new plan, and me in the library with a styrofoam cup, some paper clips, tape, and a five pack of ring magnets from Radio Shack. And what do you know? I pulled off the Macguyver...the motor worked! A few of my students bravely volunteered to hold the wire contacts to the battery in the absence of a holder, and thrilled to see my little motor spin even as the exposed metal slowly heated up. (Things got especially bad when we put 4 D cells in series to power the device...the wire actually started smoking, which would be cool if it weren't so terrifying.)
Here's a diagram showing how a much neater version of this motor would look.
I wish I could claim the design was original, but the diagram came from the Exploratorium website. And in the end, the originality of the design feels less important to me than the look on my students faces seeing that scientific miracles are all around us, just waiting to be discovered with a few relatively common materials and just a little bit of patience.
Every so often I have a moment of brilliance with my students. It's extremely rare, but there are moments where everything works out and my demonstrations actually succeed in engaging student interest.
Ironically, the latest addition to my list of teaching triumphs occurred outside the classroom. I was lending a hand at Underwood's after-school tutoring program. The regular staff is an English teacher and an algebra teacher. They're the ones who show up everyday and get paid for their trouble. I normally am around after school anyway so I like to drop by and help out. But this week has been odd due to state-mandated testing, so the crowds were small and even my students had very little immediate homework.
Which meant it was time for the Invisible Ben to work on another one of his famous experiments. This week I had done a mini-unit on magnets and figured that the best way to end it would be an experiment my father showed my friends and I while we were doing Young Astronauts in fourth grade. The idea, in short, was to build a motor. Dad's design used a cork, several feet of enameled wire, a wooden base, one ceramic magnet, some tacks, and a pair of paperclips. Unfortunately, this weekend, I did not have a large amount of time to assemble kits for all my classes, or even for groups of four. I needed something else.
Which led to some research, a new plan, and me in the library with a styrofoam cup, some paper clips, tape, and a five pack of ring magnets from Radio Shack. And what do you know? I pulled off the Macguyver...the motor worked! A few of my students bravely volunteered to hold the wire contacts to the battery in the absence of a holder, and thrilled to see my little motor spin even as the exposed metal slowly heated up. (Things got especially bad when we put 4 D cells in series to power the device...the wire actually started smoking, which would be cool if it weren't so terrifying.)
Here's a diagram showing how a much neater version of this motor would look.
I wish I could claim the design was original, but the diagram came from the Exploratorium website. And in the end, the originality of the design feels less important to me than the look on my students faces seeing that scientific miracles are all around us, just waiting to be discovered with a few relatively common materials and just a little bit of patience.
