First Hand Experience at Inquiry

On Monday, we were given a treat. We played junior scientist in an inquiry class. The objective of the inquiry class was hidden because it's like reading a detective story: you have to wait at the end to see "who done it." This made the experience more exciting, because of the element of surprise; the anticipation was rich and because we had to question our observations ourselves, no perspective was wrong.

We were given three stations; grouped in pairs and took on one challenge at a time. Dish detergent, a hand-propelled mixer, bowls, plates and spoons where our material on the first station Alex and me were given. Our instructions were to use the material and make a one foot tower, over a dish, made entirely out of foam. Alex went straight to work. He gave stroke after stroke for over 20 minutes, while I held the bowl in position and brought some water from the pitcher. I don't think any one got to a foot, but we came very close.

The next station had two very sweet looking soda cola bottles (Root Beer & Cream Soda,) a carton of eggs, shaving cream, hardening powder and the same material from station one. If I remember correctly, our job was to test the density of the different kinds of foam we could make. It might have been the stiffness of the dabs of suds. The shaving cream won, bar none. And, the soda came last. The next station was like the first, but the challenge was to see what could make better foam: foam made from 200 strokes or 400 strokes. Alejandro chose the greater one and his gave more soap than mine. Our hypothesis was correct: the more you beat the soapy water the more foam you'll get. We finished off by jolting down some reflective questions and we all departed into the night.