As if I don't already have a huge backblog, Jon keeps posting things in Google Reader/Facebook that I think those who can't see them will be interested in. In this case, since I can't comment at GeekDad, I'll comment here.
When GeekDad's son was 12 years old he entered his school's science fair, which called for inventing something new and useful.[A]fter various aborted attempts and blind alleys, ;he' came up with the idea of a self-buttering toaster....The device Andy designed was intricate yet simple: a wood and steel construction that held a slice of bread at an angle in front of a carefully wound matrix of nichrome wire heating elements. While the bread toasted, the heat from the wires melted a glop of butter on a perforated metal holder positioned over the bread. The butter dripped through the holes and on to the toasting bread. Voila! There was a slice of automatically buttered toast....When the judges came to Andy’s table, the toaster worked perfectly. With self-assurance and a smile, he handed each judge a slice of warm, buttery Wonder Bread for a snack.
But when the winners were announced, Andy’s name wasn’t called. Crestfallen, he approached the judges and asked, “Why didn’t I get a ribbon?” “Well, Andy,” said a judge, “we thought your machine was dangerous. After all, it uses electricity and it gets very hot.” “Of course it does. It’s a toaster,” he protested. “It’s supposed to get hot and use electricity. If it didn’t, it wouldn’t be a toaster.” Unswayed by logic, the judges would not reconsider.
First place went to a girl who made a cap and vest for her hamster.
Further commentary would be superfluous, but I'll share one of our own frustrating experiences with science fairs. I know that at higher levels kids are doing projects with names like ALPHA-Lipoic Acid: Towards a Novel Neuroprotective Treatment for Alzheimer's Associated Cognitive Dysfunction in a Drosophila Model, but how they get there from here is a mystery to me.
When Janet was in kindergarten, our school district, which is county-wide and consists of many elementary schools, held what they called a Curriculum Fair, including not ony science but also mathematics and social studies. All students were required to participate on the local school level, and Janet chose mathematics.
Through this and other science fair experiences we learned to be content with the knowlege gained and not give much credence to the judgements of others, positive or negative. But somewhere, somehow, our top students are finding reward and encouragment for high-quality work, even if it "uses electricity and gets very hot."Her project, which I suggested, was to consider the numbers 0 through 20, to write down all the combinations of two numbers whose sum was a given number, and to note how many such combinations there were for each number. The work was all her own, and she discovered that, for each number, the number of combinations was always one more than the number itself. She also noticed that she could write the problems so that the first addend ran from 0 up to the number, and the second addend ran from the number down to 0. She made observations, formed her hypotheses (how she loved the word "hypothesis”), and checked them for the remaining numbers, finding them to be true. It was a fun and valuable project, and to my mind demonstrated true mathematical thinking at an appropriate level.
Her teachers thought so, too, and her work earned first place at the school level. Not so the district judges, where she was given an "honorable mention." It's difficult to comment on this without sounding like a ridiculous stage mom or helicopter parent, but I was offended more as a mathematician than as a mother. There was no opportunity to talk with the judges and attempt to discern their logic, but based on their choice of winners they appeared to be impressed by surveys and charts. In my admittedly not-so-humble opinion, Janet's was far and away the best kindergarten project there, certainly the only one that considered real mathematical questions and showed mathematical thinking.
