The Middle School Infatuation with the Scientific Method

It's impossible in this country to traverse middle school without a thorough examination of the scientific method, which usually involves multiple full on projects, topped with presentations. Most of us have studied the scientific method more extensively than the Constitution, the seminal document written by the founding fathers that defines your rights as a citizen. People in this country learn the Pledge of Allegiance to the scientific method all through middle school.

Bill Nye

It's great that our preteens learn to make a hypothesis, collect data and evaluate the results. That's science. Bill Nye would stand in ovation and clap like one of Pavlov's dogs at the mere utterance of the term. It's been around since the 17th century. If it wasn't for the scientific method, we would still be going for a haircut, and a blood letting to balance the humors.

It's great that everyone has to learn about the scientific method so we don't have to argue arcane stances against creationism or intelligent design. We can simply pull out our scientific method banner and march, lock step, over anyone who doesn't agree with our well-formed, thoroughly researched, extensively tested hypotheses. The only issue I have with the middle school infatuation with the scientific method is that most of us in the course of our daily activities for better part of our entire life will never have need for the scientific method. What we more likely will need to do is some form of reengineering.

Now, reengineering is likely something you didn't study in middle school. Simply put, reengineering is figuring out how something is made, how it was assembled, how it works. You reengineer something for a very important reason, to fix it. A lot of things are going to break in your lifetime, and being able to fix things is a valuable skill. Calling in the trades every time something doesn't work is an expensive proposition. If you own a house, a car, a boat, a computer, a bicycle, anything you got to be able to fix things.

A good example is a 3-way switch which is used when you have a need to turn on a light from more than one location. I'm sure you have a 3-way circuit in your house. My son, Aidan, did in the science room in sixth grade. There were two doors in the science lab with light switches at each. The simple circuit for a switch and a light looks like this,

Simple Switched Circuit

Obviously if you have two switches at different locations you need something more in the wiring and switches to allow one switch to operate independently of the other. Understanding how this works is crucial to repairing a 3-way circuit. You can call an electrician, but it will cost you a minimum of $400, or you can fix it yourself in about twenty minutes. Your choice, Einstein.

When it came to the science fair, Aidan became very interested in the operation of a 3-way circuit. He wanted to teach his friends how to set up the circuit given wires and switches, a battery and a light. Commensurate with his generation, he developed a simulated three way circuit in Minecraft, a popular, creative building, sandbox video game.

His teacher initially rejected his proposal on the grounds that it didn't follow the scientific method. He asked if she knew how a 3-way circuit worked. She didn't. True, he wasn't purposing a possible solution to a problem plaguing mankind, but if you ever worked on one of these circuits without knowing what you’re doing, you know how difficult it is to get the wiring right. There are six connections to be made which offers you 720 possible combination with only two of them being correct.

After some negotiations, he managed to convince Madam Curie to let him proceed. He did a fantastic job explaining how a 3-way switch is actually a logical OR gate. He traced out the circuit from the power source to the light for each switch position. He even called his presentation The Or Gates Around Us.

Van da Graaf
Generator

When the judges voted on the best science project, a student whose father build a Van da Graaf generator out of some copper gutters won first prize. I sat through the kid’s explanation of how it worked, and he was under the impression that the charge came from the cord to the electric motor. Wrong answer, Tesla.

Second place was a girl with an orange and some litmus paper. As far as I could tell, she was technically correct with all her findings. It's just not very hypnotizing to hypothesize that dipping litmus paper into a glass of milk would give a neutral response, however true. Not bad, Rachel Carson.

Third place was a balloon on a string. The hypothesis was that when the clothespin was removed, the balloon would zoom along the string. Since tape was used to form a loop through which the string passed through, when the clothespin was removed, the balloon popped. Good enough for third place, Orville Wright.

Aidan got "honorable mention" because he didn't follow the scientific method. The kid who won didn't either, but when you got electric bolts shooting across the classroom and students hair standing on end, you got a winner with or without the scientific method.

I know what you're thinking. I'm a disgruntled, snowplow parent, who's annoyed that my son didn't win. That's what a friend of mine told me. He's probably right. The other day at his house, I flipped a switch, and he said,

"Don't touch that switch. If you do, the other switch over there won't work anymore."

Aidan said,

"The travelers are hooked to the wrong screws."

He was right. I took out my Swiss Army knife, and he and I wired the switch up correctly. I don't know much about snowplows, but if I had a problem with mine, my son and I would certainly figure out how to fix it.

Editor's Note: Originally posted on October 20, 2016.