JoinAll Book Chapters
Book Chapter
Happy and Sad Bouncing Balls: Student Diversity Matters
This activity features two seemingly identical black rubber balls—one happy and one sad—that behave quite differently. The two balls can be used ...
Book Chapter
Electrical Circuits: Promoting Learning Communities
Direct current (DC) electricity flows through a closed circuit of people, and a battery-powered ball lights up. In this activity, the Energy Ball (or ...
Book Chapter
Eddy Currents: Learning Takes Time
A metal slug dropped into a copper tube falls under the pull of gravity and drops out at the bottom fairly quickly. When a second, apparently identica...
Book Chapter
Cognitive Inertia: Seeking Conceptual Change
Cognitive inertia (or conservatism)—the tendency of humans to continue to think both what and how they have previously thought—applies at both the...
Book Chapter
Optics and Mirrors: Challenging Learners' Illusions
Science depends on empirical evidence, logical argument, and skeptical review. Optical illusions challenge us to consider if our eyes sometimes play t...
Book Chapter
Polarizing Filters: Examining Our Conceptual Filters
If two polarizing filters are placed perpendicular to each other, both horizontal and vertical vibrations will be blocked, allowing little light to be...
Book Chapter
Invisible Gases Matter: Knowledge Pours Poorly
Invisible gases are a form of matter that have volume or occupy space. In this activity, water flows down through two identical funnels, each inserted...
Book Chapter
The Stroop Effect: The Persistent Power of Prior Knowledge
If learners are asked to state, as fast as they can, the colors of a sequence of words that appear in different colors than the colors named, the firs...
Book Chapter
Rattlebacks: Prior Beliefs and Models for Eggciting Science
In this activity, a translucent, half-ellipsoid-shape, molded acrylic polystyrene object—known as a “rattleback”—is placed on an overhead proj...
Book Chapter
Burning a Candle at Both Ends: Classrooms as Complex Systems
This introductory activity models how simple it is to prepare and execute interactive, discrepant-event demonstration-experiments. They can be used da...
Book Chapter
Tornado in a Bottle: The Vortex of Teaching and Learning
In this activity, two 2 L plastic soda bottles are connected at their mouths. Colored water from the upper bottle falls in the lower bottle quickly on...
Book Chapter
Floating and Sinking: Raising FUNdaMENTAL Questions
Learning science is FUNdaMENTAL—that is, it is a combination of hands-on FUN and minds-on MENTAL activity. It builds on students’ prior knowledge ...
Book Chapter
Cartesian Diver: A Transparent but Deceptive "Black Box"
An eyedropper “diver”—eyedropper, dropper, diver, and Cartesian diver are used interchangeable in this activity—can be made to float, sink, or...
Book Chapter
Crystal Heat: Catalyzing Cognitive Construction
A small metal clicker/disk within a sealed pouch containing a clear, colorless liquid is clicked, and the liquid rapidly crystallizes into a solid mas...
Book Chapter
Perceptual Paradoxes: Multisensory Science and Measurement
Perceptual paradox activities challenge assumptions in ways that are both playful and mentally challenging and that point to the need for quantitative...