Handouts are available at the end of this post.

Video Transcript

Hi Science Teachers,

Welcome to Science Teacher Summer School, Episode 3.

I’m Kent Lui, and something you may not know about me is that doing stand up comedy is on my bucket list. I’d like to get good enough to get to do a set on a late night tv show and then retire. Now, let’s get to work.

We all ask students the same question at the beginning of the year – that is, “what is science?” – but what is your answer? Some teachers, myself included when I started teaching, would say something along the line of science is a method of exploring and making sense of the world. We’ve all heard or said that before. But, science is not just experimental design and scientific method. If we stop here, then students get the impression that science is experiments and labs. I also want students to know that science is everywhere in our everyday lives. It’s in the smartphones we use to access the internet. It’s in the ice cream and chocolate we eat. It’s in the clothes we wear.

So, how do I answer, “What is Science?” so I can reinforce this notion that science is everywhere in our everyday lives?

The solution: I connect science to universal human themes found in our everyday, our history and our stories. For example, conflict is a theme that is talked about a lot in and out of school. We even learn about it in our high school English classes – shout out to Mr. Macleod, my English 8 teacher, the 3 types of conflict are man vs man, man vs the environment, and man vs himself. So, in my science class, we also say science is conflict. For example, I ask students to name a movie they’ve seen where two groups are trying to accomplish or acquire the same thing. And, as a result, both groups try to sabotage each other during their conflict. We’ve all heard of a story like that from the movies. Of course, this story of conflict also exists in science – most notably, between Westinghouse and Edison in the AC vs DC war. I read that Edison’s company, who supported DC, tried to show that their rival’s AC was more dangerous to the public by having AC used to power the first electric chair. The point is that we make science more relevant and applicable when we tie it to universal themes. Suddenly, science is not just in the lab – but in the world around us.

Two other themes I connect is that science is change and science is patterns. With regards to patterns, I introduce the theme by playing roulette online with the student. I explain the rules and then ask some students to pick numbers to bet on. We play a few rounds. And, over time, students realize that we typically lose money because the odds of winning are slim. However, what if somebody were to win consistently more than they lost? In fact, this has happened before – so, how did people do it? Quite simply, people were able to recognize patterns in the roulette’s results and take advantage of these patterns. But, why do these patterns even exist? Isn’t a roulette’s wheel supposed to be random? Well, that’s where we start talking about things like friction and wear and tear and other scientific concepts that would explain this phenomenon.

As for science is change, I connect it with how scientific theories are always changing. For example, there was a time where people thought gastric ulcers – which are small holes in the lining of your stomach, were caused by lifestyle factors like stress. If you had a gastric ulcer, treatment at the time would be to make lifestyle changes so you wouldn’t be so stressed. Now, we know that they’re caused by a bacterial infection and can be treated with antibiotics.

In a future episode, I’ll share a few more of the universal themes I connect science with.

That’s all the time we have for this episode. Please leave any questions in the comments section below. Join me next time, when I’ll be talking about how to correctly show science videos in class. What? There’s a correct way to show videos? Yes, I think there is. You don’t want to miss it.

See you again soon. And, remember to science everywhere every day.

Resources

Handout(s): Handout – Universal Themes

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