Engaging Guided Inquiry

The focus question chosen to for this guided inquiry experiment was “How do different surfaces affect the momentum of marbles?”  In order to test this question, the learner set up two ramps.  The ramps were made by using four science textbooks and stacking them in two stacks of two.  A grooved, twelve inch ruler was placed on each stack of books so that one end of the ruler was on the books and the other end was on the surface to be tested.  The grooved ruler aided in keeping the marbles traveling in a linear path.  In order to create a fair test the only variable changed was the surface the marbles would roll over.  The same size marbles were used and the stacks of books were both placed onto the smooth tile floor.  The only difference was that a carpeted rug was placed at the end of one of the rulers.  In order to determine how surfaces affect momentum, the focus became to observe and measure how far the marbles would travel over a carpeted surface versus a surface with no carpet.  The discovery that was made confirmed the hypothesis; the smoother surface caused the marble to travel farther than the carpeted surface.  Momentum, in this case, is not affected by the marbles mass or velocity because both of these variables were constant until the surfaces changed.  When the surfaces changed friction became a more noticeable player in that the momentum of the marble rolling over the carpeted surface slowed much quicker than the momentum of the marble rolling on the smooth surface.

Engaging in a guided inquiry experience helped the learner further understand the scientific concept because it allowed for hands on investigation using familiar materials.  This experience also motivated the learner to apply the skills necessary to conduct an experiment to explore the concepts of momentum.  This process also enveloped critical thinking strategies such as making inferences and drawing conclusions.  The activity was engaging and the learner was not stuck reading about a science concept, but was instead applying the concept to a particular design.  It is easy to follow an already created procedure to complete an experiment, but to have to actually design the procedure and then put what you design into action is a challenging way to make the learner think about the process and not just the science concept being learned. 

One of the challenges faced in this process was the minimal amount of collaboration that took place.  Both the inquiry process and the engineering design process call for an extensive amount of collaboration and teamwork to get the project or experiment accomplished.  The learner found that without collaboration, ideas in design of the experiment were limited.  This confirms the old adage that “two heads are better than one” in some instances and it drives home the importance of collaboration amongst any group of learners.

This kind of experience will be a huge benefit to any science student.  This kind of guided inquiry gets the student thinking outside the cookie cutter recipe of doing science demonstrations and experiments according to a preplanned set of procedures and it gets them to creating, thinking, and designing.  It helps them to reach that higher level of thinking skills that all learners need.  The biggest challenge students will face in using this kind of instruction will be getting them used to thinking for themselves.  This process needs to be scaffolded so that all students, struggling or not can participate successfully.  Overall, this guided inquiry experience drove home the importance of doing the science as opposed to reading about the science.