"Celling" Science

Today was the first day of class. Dr. Simrnova engaged us in activities to introduce the class to each other, reflect upon science stereotypes, and to the steps of the scientific method. The first task was to get through the one activity every student hates, the self introductions. Each student was instructed to fold a piece of paper in a particular fashion and create a name tag "with love". Next, every student was encouraged to introduce themselves by stating their name and prior experience as a science student. Fortunately for me, my experiences have all been exciting and intriguing. Science is not an easily understood and it's not meant to be. The field is constantly growing, making new discoveries, making mistakes, and being challenged. When you have a problem, do you always find an easy, correct solution right away? If you do, you are very very lucky! Science is all about taking problems, questions, and the unknown and trying to find solutions, answers, and piece things together. A lot of trial, error, experimentation, fails, and life changing accomplishments are experienced in the field of science. This is what makes the subject so arousing and interesting. In order to create interest and excitement, Dr. Simrnova begin her lesson with an activity to engage the class in the Scientific Method. First, we were asked to look at a filled bag. Without a doubt we had our question; "what is in the bag?" Next, each student took a guess at what item/items could be in the bag. Hypothesis: check! Now to experiment. The bag was passed around to myself and my classmate to feel for 5 seconds. Suddenly we had a brand new list of possibilities. Everyone was eager to know what is in the bag, but we have to take all the steps of the scientific method in order to reach the answer.