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Author Topic: Eight-year-olds publish scientific paper.  (Read 2112 times)

JennyB

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Eight-year-olds publish scientific paper.
« on: December 23, 2010, 06:34 AM »
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.    :Thmbsup:

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

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?

 :-* :-* 8)


If you don't see how it can fail -
you haven't understood it properly.