Science or Engineering and a Pendulum

Today was the second class in my Teaching Elementary School Science and Math course. Last week we explored what it means to think and act like a scientist by using our science process skills to explore surface tension and the properties of water drops. Today we briefly explored the content of the elementary school science curriculum and then looked at the difference between science and engineering. The perfect way to do this is to explore the properties of a pendulum. We explored three variables to see  which of them affected the speed of the pendulum; the length, the weight or the release position. After some exploration the students decided only the length affected the time of the swing. They also discovered that if there is more weight and the release  position is higher the pendulum will swing for a longer time.

With this new-found scientific knowledge I then challenged the students to make a pendulum clock that swung exactly 15 times in 15 seconds. The activity had segued into an engineering activity because they were now using their scientific knowledge to solve a problem. In science the questions arise from the natural world; in engineering they arise from how we use our knowledge of science to answer questions of our adaptation to the natural world, or how to invent things or solve problems.

Here is the most amazing pendulum video I have ever seen; from harmony to chaos and back again, over and over, just like life.

Science or Engineering?

Last week I posted a blog entry about Dr. Ioannis Miauilis, the Director of the Boston Museum of Science and Engineering. Like Dr. Miauilis I have always believed that the study of the natural world is not enough to fulfill the "science" component of the elementary school curriculum. To ignore design technology (engineering) would be like teaching children to read without talking about literature, or teaching children to compute without teaching them how to problem solve.


To help my students differentiate between science and engineering
(design technology) we talk about the origin of the questions we ask, the sources of the inquiry. In science the questions arise out of the natural world; what is magnetism? how does it work? what are the five senses? what is the water cycle? In design technology, or engineering, the questions arise out of how we use our scientific knowledge to solve human problems. How do we use magnetism to enhance our lives? How do we use our knowledge of the water cycle to grow better crops.

In the science part of class today my students explored water through the concept of drops of water. In the engineering or design technology part of the class they used a copy of the local newspaper to support a small washer as high as they could above the tables.

An application that brings the two together in a unified way is to explore the motion of a pendulum in terms of what causes it to swing faster or slower and then design a pendulum clock that swings once every second.

The design technology part of the science of magnetism can be exemplified with  Mag Lev trains or cow magnets. (My students would not believe there was such a thing, even though I was holding one, until I showed them one on a website).