Simple Peer Techniques
- by Doug Duncan
Examples
The key to this is finding very simple, concrete physical experiments that are not intuitive. For example, one week when we're talking about colors, I take the slide projector and a big prism and project a bright spectrum on the wall. The weekly challenge I present is to insert a red filter into the beam either before the light is dispersed or after the light is dispersed. What will happen to the spectrum on the wall? People talk about that endlessly -- the end of the class period comes and a large fraction of the class is still debating with each other.
The week we do dynamics, I challenge the students to predict what will happen when I drop a bowling ball and a little steel marble. The students have learned the two relevant equations, right? The formula for the force of gravity, and f = ma. They can write those down on a piece of paper and cross out the mass. But that doesn't mean that they believe it.
That week it was reported to me that large numbers of students were dropping things off the dormitory balcony. So one thing happened already -- one of my goals was achieved. The students were involved in the science, and they were having fun at it, independent of whether they got the right or wrong prediction.
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