Posted on

How To Think Like A Scientist

Wilson Greatbatch was an American engineer and inventor, who had more than 150 patents to his name over his lifetime. His most famous invention is the implantable Pacemaker, which has saved countless lives since it came out. But it almost didn’t happen!

Greatbatch was working on a device to record heart sounds, when he accidentally installed the wrong resistor and realized that the device was now giving off rhythmic electrical pulses. He realized at that moment, that he had hit on something important. Pacemakers before that time were bulky devices that worked on power mains, but Greatbatch’s discovery showed that they could work with battery and could be made small enough to be implanted.

While this may seem at the surface to have been an accidental discovery, Greatbatch was really thinking like a good scientist. Kevin Dunbar and Nancy Nersessian, have studied scientists and their thought processes for many years, and have distilled the core thinking patterns that underlie creative scientific thinking. Here are a few strategies and techniques that they believe lead to better scientific accomplishments:

Unexpected Results

Accomplished scientists have often mentioned the role of chance in leading to a discovery. But what distinguishes great scientists from average ones is how they pursue the unexpected results. As Dunbar explains, a good heuristic to go by is, “If the finding is unexpected, then set a goal of discovering the causes of the unexpected finding.”

To investigate an unexpected finding, scientists have to pay attention to the finding and recognize that it could lead to some new learning first. It turns out that some scientists have a tendency to make serendipitous discoveries. Sandra Erdelez, a scientist at University of Missouri, has been studying this for many years and found that some people, called the encounterers, have a tendency to stop and “collect” useful or interesting information they bump into. Based on their individual differences in bumping into unexpected information, she classifies people into three types – non-encounterers, occasional encounterers and super-encounterers.

Analogical Thinking

One of the most useful cognitive techniques frequently used in science is analogical thinking. Rutherford-Bohr’s analogy between solar system and atoms or Newton’s analogy between projectiles and moon helped those scientists construct a better model.

Analogies have helped with different aspects of scientific thinking like generating models, designing experiments or formulating hypotheses. As Dunbar explains, “We have found that rather than trying various permutations on a question, the scientists search for a similar problem that has been solved and seek to import its answer to their current problem.” The advantage of analogical thinking, is that it helps the scientists come to a solution quickly by avoiding iterative trials.

Imagistic Reasoning

Imagistic reasoning makes use of images to help in analyzing and understanding a phenomenon. For example, Faraday’s starting point in constructing his field concept was using an image to represent the lines of field like those that form when iron filings are sprinkled around a magnet. By using a more idealized representation through an image, he was able to capture the underlying model.  

Nersessian believes that imagistic reasoning, along with analogical reasoning and thought experiments are part of “abstraction techniques” and help construct a model of a scientific concept.

While most people are familiar with analogical reasoning, As Nersessian explains, “…there are numerous cases that establish the prominence of reasoning from pictorial representations in the constructive practices of scientists who were struggling to articulate new conceptualizations. Such imagistic representations have often been used in conjunction with analogical reasoning in science.”

 

Research in over a decade has demonstrated the significance of these cognitive techniques and strategies in science, and should be included in science education.

We are excited to launch a new middle school science program in partnership with Positive Ally, starting this coming academic year. Our goal is to bring these cognitive techniques to the forefront to build deeper understanding of scientific concepts and help students apply their thinking in solving real world problems.

Posted on

Summer Camp: Applications in Thermochromism

We just wrapped up our summer camps for this year and are excited to share some of the interesting inventions our students came up with! This year we collaborated once again with Archimedes school (who taught 3D printing), and explored a newer STEM area – smart materials.

A smart material changes its physical property in reaction to its environment. The reaction could be a change in volume, color or some other material property and is triggered by a change in the environment (e.g. temperature, stress, electrical current).  In other words, “…this material has built-in or intrinsic sensor(s), actuator(s) and control mechanism(s) by which it is capable of sensing a stimulus, responding to it in a predetermined manner and extent, in a short or appropriate time and reverting to its original state as soon as the stimulus is removed.”

Smart materials are being used in a lot of interesting applications including smart wearables, aerospace and environmental engineering. In our camps, we experimented with one kind of smart material – thermochromic paint, or paint that changes color with temperature. Some common examples of products that use thermochromic paints are mood rings and baby spoons.

Thermochromic paints use liquid crystals or leuco dye technology. After absorbing a certain amount of light or heat, the molecular structure of the pigment changes in such a way that it absorbs and emits light at a different wavelength than before. After the heat source is removed, the molecular structure comes back to its original form.

In our camp, we tried out different ways to change temperature and induce color change in the pigment like body heat, friction, warm light bulbs and electrical current (with high resistance wires). After the students had a chance to play with thermochromic paints, they started the process of coming up with different applications that would benefit from thermochromism.

Students used a variation of mind-mapping, and techniques like associative thinking and challenging assumptions to come up with several different ideas that could use thermochromic paint in a meaningful way. As last year, students found that by using these creative thinking techniques they could come up with 2-3x more ideas. Then they picked a final idea (after evaluating all the ideas on different criteria) to build their prototype. Quite a few of students also 3D printed their prototype (or at least parts of the prototype) by themselves!

As we expected, student ideas were all over the map. Here is a sample of some of the ideas our campers came up with:

  • Electronics: Quite a few ideas were related to overheating of electronic devices so users can take a break from their device. These include cell phone cases, stickers or attachments for laptops and gaming devices.
  • Thermometers: We had a few interesting thermometers for sensing indoor, outdoor and body temperature. For instance, a soft headband to put on babies and little children that can sense when they have fever – very handy to keep track of when to give the next dose of mediation!
  • Baking: One student made a flexible band that goes around baking dishes and can help you keep track when the dish has cooled down and is safe to eat from. A couple students also made multipurpose gloves that could be useful during baking or other activities.
  • Outdoor Activities: Students also created some interesting products like icemakers, tents and even shoes that could warn their users when it’s getting too warm.

We also had a bunch of interesting ideas like an animal shelter/cage (to help the staff easily figure out if its getting too hot for the animal), fun outdoor sunglasses, a cover for steering wheels and cupholders.

What was most heart-warming though, was to see the sense of accomplishment in these students for coming up with their own idea, following it through with prototyping and proudly presenting it on the last day!

Posted on

Stanford Innovation Lab’s Sock Challenge Results

One of the most well-known divergent thinking problem is the Alternate Uses (AU) task where you come up with different ways to use simple, everyday objects. Professor Tina Seelig, who teaches Creativity and Innovation at Stanford University, often uses challenges that build on the AU task for her students. The goal is for students to build both creativity and entrepreneurship by learning to look at an old thing in new ways, and create some kind of value from it.

We recently participated in Stanford Innovation Lab’s (SIL) Sock Challenge, where students had to create value out of mismatched socks. With students from C-Pillars Academy (most of them between 7 and 10 yrs), we used a session to try out the sock challenge one afternoon.

As expected, we got a range of ideas from our students – some common and some original. Five of our student entries were selected and showcased by the SIL team – ideas that we would have picked as well! Here is what we liked about these particular entries.

Mental Transformations

Creativity comes from the mental transformations you make to an existing object or concept to adapt it to a new situation. At one of the spectrum, you could generate ideas that use very few (or no transformations) by simply using a key aspect of the object. An example of this is using the sock as a bag to hold different objects. This doesn’t really require any big mental leaps since a sock resembles an elongated bag and the overall shape of the sock triggers that idea quickly.

On the other extreme, you could do a lot of transformations (typically to get down to the material the object is made of) till there is no longer any resemblance to the original object, and then create something different from the material. An example of this is cutting the sock(s) open and then using it to make a T-shirt or a sweater. In essence, these ideas use the sock as a piece of cloth out of which you can now fashion many different things and it doesn’t really matter that you started out with socks.  

Both of these extremes produce ideas that are not very creative, but the ideas in the middle – the “Goldilocks Ideas” – are where interesting things happen. These are where the transformations preserve some essential properties of the original object, and the changes are applied very thoughtfully to allow the object to be used in a different situation.

The Sock Ball Game created by one of our students is an example. The goal of the game is to toss the colored ball into the matching colored pouch. The bottom part of the sock was cut at the right place to make pouches and the top part of the sock was converted carefully into colored balls to make the game work. The Arm-Warmer is another such example, where another student made holes at exactly the right places (leveraging the heel of the sock for the thumb part) to make the design work.

Remote Associations

Another aspect of Creativity is being able to combine unrelated ideas, or associational thinking. The cloth diaper idea is an example of making a connection with a third world social issue of using simple pieces of cloth as diapers. The idea proposes using old socks to add an additional, absorbent layer on the cloth to make better diapers while reusing socks. The idea stands out since it combines a concept that you don’t normally associate with socks to make something useful.

Elaboration

Elaboration measures the amount of detail and flourishes added to the core idea to make it more complete. Elaboration helps clarify and articulate an idea which results in a better understanding, and often leads to improvements in the core idea. The headband and purse created by two students are great examples of elaboration for this challenge. The headband uses extra parts of the sock to make the flower decoration and the purse uses rolled up pieces of sock to make the handles. And of course, the beautiful designs just make you want to use them!

 

Our students had a lot of fun working on this challenge and we look forward to doing more of these in the future!

 

Posted on

Thought Experiment: A Creative Exercise in Science

One day at the Cathedral of Pisa, Galileo who was still a teenager, watched a chandelier that a monk had just lit swinging in an arc. Using his medical training, he started timing the motion and discovered that even though the swing got shorter and shorter, the time of each swing stayed the same. That observation so excited him, that he rushed back home to experiment with strings and weights, and it eventually led to a life long fascination with pendulums and motion.

But one of his most interesting discoveries, one that was incorporated in Newton’s first law of motion,  was not the product of direct experimentation. It was his ability to imagine a scenario that was almost impossible to replicate in real life. It’s what Ernst Mach later called as a Gedankenexperiment, or a thought experiment.

Galileo realized that without friction, a ball rolled along a double incline plane will reach its original height on the other side just like a pendulum (Fig. a). He then asks to imagine what would happen if one side of the double inclined plane is made longer. The ball will then travel a longer distance till it retains its original height (Fig. b). In the limiting case of infinite length, the ball would continue rolling since it can’t reach its original height (Fig. c). This completed upended the Aristotelian view of motion that the natural state of a body is that of rest, and motion requires some force.

Thought experiments have played a significant role in the history of Science from Galileo to Einstein. Scientists expand knowledge of a concept, by creating mental models and running virtual experiments on them. In fact, cognitive scientists believe that people reason by carrying out thought experiments on internal mental models.

But more than that, thought experiments are essentially a creative exercise. Creativity at its core is about playing with models – changing different aspects or adding new associations – and iterating to find a better solution. Whether it is using SCAMPER to manipulate an attribute or reversing an assumption, creative thinking provides ways to manipulate mental models in a quest to discover breakthrough ideas.

As Nancy Nersessian, an expert on model-based thinking in Science, explains, “While thought experimenting is a truly creative part of scientific practice, the basic ability to construct and execute a thought experiment is not exceptional. The practice is highly refined extension of a common form of reasoning. It is rooted in our abilities to anticipate, imagine, visualize, and re-experience from memory. That is, it belongs to a species of thinking by means of which we grasp alternatives, make predictions, and draw conclusions about potential real-world situations we are not participating in at that time.”

While the role of thought experiments in advancing scientific knowledge is undisputed, what is lesser known is its role as a pedagogical tool up until recently. After dropping out of the rigid school system in Germany, Einstein found the perfect school in Switzerland, where Johann Pestalozzi‘s methods in visual and conceptual understanding were used.

It was there that Einstein first engaged in a thought experiment that would make him the scientific genius of his time. As he told a friend later, “In Aarau I made my first rather childish experiments in thinking that had a direct bearing on the Special Theory. If a person could run after a light wave with the same speed of light, you would have a wave arrangement which could be completely independent of time. Of course, such a thing is impossible.”

It’s unfortunate that over time thought experiments as a pedagogical tool have been dropped from science education. Students now spend most of their time learning facts and running predefined experiments as opposed imagining and framing their own thought experiments. Perhaps by re-introducing thought experiments, more students will find science engaging and stimulating, just like Einstein. 

 

Posted on

Inventor Spotlight: Suhani Nog

Our inventor this time is Suhani Nog, whose team invented the multi-functional scissors in one of our earlier camps. The team’s invention won a national level award as part of the “Student Ideas for a Better America” competition organized by the National Museum of Education.

Here is Suhani talking  about herself and her ideas.  

Can you tell us a little bit about yourself?

My name is Suhani Nog and I am a 7th grader at Evergreen Middle School. My favorite subjects are math and science. Some hobbies I have are playing squash, reading, and drawing. I had a lot of fun at this summer camp learning about creativity and brainstorming.

What is your invention and how does it work?

Our invention was called the Switch-It-Scissors which was primarily made for cutting through different materials. The blades of the scissors can be swapped for a different kind of blade which is better for the task at hand.

How did you come up with the idea?

When our team was discussing ideas, one problem that came up a lot in our daily lives had to do with scissors. Whether we were cutting through cardboard, paper, or an intricate design, the same scissors could not be used. The blades were not small enough, strong enough, or sharp enough.

Did your prototype work? How was that experience?

For our prototype we cut out cardboard and covered it with felt and duct tape to resemble the blades which were attached together at the bottom making it slide apart and together. We created a couple of different blades using cardboard covered with aluminum foil. The blades could be slid into a socket at the end of the handles.

What did you learn from the summer camp?

One very important skill I learned from this camp was how to be creative and be original. The best designs are not complicated but simple. Using everyday problems, the most important inventions are the ones which can solve the problem the easiest.

What is your most fun memory from the camp?

My best memory from the camp would be all the creative acting games we played in the morning. These activities really boosted up my creativity level and allowed me to think up original solutions to problems.

What kind of problems do you want to solve when you grow up?

When I grow up, I am thinking about going into biology which is a field of science which I really enjoy. When I grow up , I am going to solve problems to make others’ lives better in the future. In this field, problem solving and creativity will really come into play.

What will you be using your prize money for?

I will use my prize money to buy more resources to continue my love of science and math.

Congratulations to Suhani for her great work! We look forward to seeing you solve more problems!