Eight-year-olds publish scientific paper.

[JennyB]

This is such an inspiring example of Socratic science teaching: a class of Devon primary school children has had a paper on bee's colour perception accepted in the Royal Society Biology Letters.   

Here's the background to the experiments, done two years ago when the eldest of the children was just eight: 

The experiments were not devised by the ‘scientist’, but by twenty five 8-year-old children. The children devised the questions; they reasoned an answer; they designed the experiments; and they did all the data analysis.

Some questions asked by the children about bees:

• What if... we had a colour in the tube that connects the hive to the arena, and then they have to go to that colour on the flower wall?
• What if... we could find out how much effort the bees will go through in order to get a reward? For instance, they have to move something heavy out of the way to get a reward.
• What if... we could find out if they prefer warm or cold nectar?
• What if... we could find out if they could follow a route of colour?
• What if... we could discover if bees can learn to go to certain colours depending on how sweet they are?
• What if... we could find out if some bees could learn faster than others?
• What if... we could find out how many colours they could remember?