Camera, Camera on the wall, who's the hottest of them all?

If you have ever stood next to another human being, then you probably felt some body heat radiating from her. What you might not realize is that everything emits radiation: you, your dog, your chair. Everything! (see this article: http://discovermagazine.com/2007/jun/life-is-rad).

Explainers play in the infrared camera with ice and hot water. Photo courtesy of Sylvia Algire*

Unnecessary Superpowers: Seeing Polarized Light

“Once you see it, you can’t unsee it”*

Earlier this fall, I conversed with my coworker, Julie, about what superpower we would choose. She mentioned that she and another coworker, Rob, were interested in learning how to see different types of light. I immediately grew excited because this seemed like an attainable superpower. I decided to focus on seeing polarized light.

During my search, I even found a website that listed seeing polarized light as a useless superpower. My search ended with Haidinger’s Brush, the manifestation of how humans see polarized light.

The Science Inquisition

Memory of your time in K-12 classrooms probably conjures up visions of memorizing facts and regurgitating them for exams.

In particular, science labs often consisted of a box of equipment, a set of instructions, and the correct conclusion. Wrong answers resulted in error analyses and feelings of shame.

Upon venturing into the science education world, I’ve repeatedly heard the words “inquiry” and “inquiry-based learning” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inquiry-based_learning).

Inquiry-based learning is very opposite to traditional learning, and science is the subject most conducive to inquiry-based inquiry or open learning. In this type of classroom, there are no right or wrong answers. Students are given the box of equipment with no instructions. They spend class time exploring and then develop questions and theories based on their observations.