Led by: Rony Yarden
“The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious.”
Albert Einstein
Mysteries have challenged the best minds among scientists, archaeologists, anthropologists, and adventurers since the beginning of time. Mysteries and curiosities have held their grip on human imagination and have contributed to the accomplishments of many great scientists. Since we humans naturally have such great appetites for mystery, why not take advantage and utilize the opportunity to attract the interest of ours students.
So come check out the black box method to capture the natural curiosity of your students. It is a sure way to engage students in nature of science practices, as they apply observation and inference skills in order to predict the contents of a mystery box. There are many possible content applications and uses for black boxes in the classroom that can be adapted for middle school science, physical science and physics courses. In this workshop you’ll be presented with a circuit related black box. We’ll focus on how to utilize the black box approach to discover what component(s) make the circuit in our mystery box.
What’s especially great about black boxes is they provide a method that complements the nature of science and how scientists actually uncover the science behind what humans call mysteries. In addition, the activities foster creativity and problem solving skills. Better yet they are rather cheap and easy to put together. You will leave the workshop with a great experience, some exciting ideas for how to incorporate black boxes into your classroom, and some useful resources and instructions for creating a modular black box (15-20 pieces) that can be easily altered for your classroom needs.