Popular Science and InnoCentive invite readers to invent a better way to teach science
Posted 08.16.2011 at 10:38 am
8 Comments
PopSci Innovation Challenge
Graham Murdoch
It’s time to get the next generation of scientists thinking about what’s important, and you can help. Below are five education challenges chosen by the editors of Popular Science in partnership with InnoCentive, an open-innovation and crowdsourcing firm. We invite you to devise a simple lesson plan for one or more of them. Each plan should be directed at middle-school students, involve at most three 50-minute sessions, and require less than $50 in materials. The most engrossing, informative and easily replicated approach in each area will earn you a cash reward—and the chance to see your work implemented in classrooms across the country. Visit our Open Innovation Pavilion to register.
POLYMERS
Every aspect of human industry, from manufacturing to medicine, incorporates materials created from polymers. Teach students how repeated structural units can be assembled to make something useful, or perhaps how the physical properties of a polymer change with its size.
BIOMIMETIC DESIGN
Engineers have long suspected that the best design ideas already exist in nature. Create a lesson plan that explores and perhaps imitates the design of a naturally occurring phenomenon, such as the motion of fish fins, the resilience of wood, the gait of a human, or other surprisingly excellent mechanisms.
BIG DATA
People are producing an overwhelming deluge of information. How will we use search engines and filtering technology alongside human intuition to derive meaning from it? The lesson plan should combine hard statistics with student observations to show how we can usefully interpret large data sets.
CLIMATE CHANGE
How can humans adjust their own way of life to cope with rising temperatures and shifting landscapes across the globe? Teach students about the nature of climate change with a lesson plan that challenges them to propose various adaptations to its consequences.
FUEL CELLS
What will power vehicles and homes in the future? The lesson plan should demonstrate the potential of fuel cells, perhaps by explaining their chemical basis or how they function within a larger mechanism.
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June 2013: American Energy Independence
Five amazing, clean technologies that will set us free, in this month's energy-focused issue. Also: how to build a better bomb detector, the robotic toys that are raising your children, a human catapult, the world's smallest arcade, and much more.
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This is a scam. I just read the policy. When you agree to the terms, they have the right to use your idea/invention. If you have an invention which you intend to submit, they have the right to sell your idea or produce it for themselves without paying you a penny. They can do this wether or not they qualify for a prize.
COSMOS DAISY> HOW BEAUTIFUL!
There is an interesting way to teach children skills that doesn't require studying for 20 years.
As an example, I met a woman who had twin girls. Her mother had great skills in knitting and sewing. So this woman collected all the skills of her mother and then downloaded the energy field to her first twin. The next day, the twin knitted a bag.
The other twin was despondent that her sister could knit and she couldn't. So her mother then downloaded the same energy field to her and then the next day the second twin created a bag with her new found sewing skills.
Because humans are a hybrid physical/energy being, our skills are stored in our energy field. Because of this, it is possible to download any information to another person.
As another example, an energy healer and myself downloaded two modules called hyperspace physics and vital energy medicine. It took about 15 minutes to download. Then the energy healer tried to stand up and exclaimed that she couldn't move her feet. So I said that was silly, and I stood up and the same thing happened. It turns out we had downloaded so much information into our energy field that we had become much heavier. That is, information is gravity! After a few minutes, the effect disappeared.
Then to my delight, the information resulted in becoming an energy healer. I was able to treat people at a distance of MS, lower back pain, and all viral, fungal and bacterial infections.
So a science teacher can download her knowledge to students by creating an energy copy of her scientific knowledge.
In another example, I downloaded all the information about the Great Pyramid. The next day I was able to calculate the mass of the pyramid. It turned out that on the tetrahedron diagram, a circle centered on the proton, with a radius equal to the mass of the pyramid, was slightly outside of our dimension. That is, the pyramid is actually an interdimensional device whereby you can walk into the homes of the Egyptians which would definitely scare the pharaohs into letting your people go.
So that is the idea which doesn't require much time nor materials and can make all of us piled higher and deeper with information and knowledge, and it is hoped, wisdom.
Consider the addiction to video games. If you loose, you are allowed a do over and in the process of loosing you gained some knowledge of why you lost. 2nd as you score points, the points are always adding up, they do not subtract for dumb answers or mistakes. In school if I make a 30% I fail the test or do not pass it, how ever you call it. But in reality, I really learned 30% knowlege and this is a gain, but emotional it does not feel like a gain, because I suffer a consequence of not achieving a higher mark. School or learning should be of positive experience and addictive as play a game. Once I leave any school, I go out into life and I experience and learn each day and this feels wonderful. Many young teens enjoy working their simple jobs at McDonalds, Walmarts and a like. But they run away as fast as they can from school. On their free time from their jobs they get together with friends and play games. Learning just needs to be a more postive experience.
In video games, children to not mind loosing, but they do not enjoy a negative consiquence. Make learning a postive experience ( giving a postive feeling for learning ) and remove the negative consiquence. In games, yes sometimes you return to the beginning. In learning, yes you may have to return to the beginning, but don't crush the emotional state of the child, be postive and move forward on what you have learned.
less than $50 dollars and attention grabbing? Box of chocolate donuts......
Your service is actually without doubt one of the finest . On the whole effect of the blog is just eye-catching .
@fzelenko - you're right, don't submit ideas you're hoping to sell or patent elsewhere. This sort of service is intended to recruit the kinds of idle notions and half-baked strokes of genius that people have floating around. We certainly don't intend to perpetrate any sort of "scam" — we're just trying to recruit great ideas that people might not otherwise have a place for. I hope you'll toss a science lesson plan into the mix. Thanks much.