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Steve Howell

How do you know that the sun will rise tomorrow?

This is a common question in philosophical discussions about the meaning and purpose of science. Most people think that it will. They make plans of action based on that belief. By way of an answer, some might talk about planetary orbits, celestial mechanics and Newton's laws of gravitation, but the essential reason why the sun will rise tomorrow is that it rose today, and yesterday, and it has done so every morning for as long as anyone can remember.

Nature follows patterns – repeated behaviours, and being able to spot those patterns has practical use. The pattern, and the utility, in sunrises is so obvious as to make the question seem absurd, but there are many more subtle patterns that are just as useful, and science is all about finding them.

OK, science is useful. Why isn't it popular? As one moves through the list of school subjects, from those that study large complicated systems like collections of people acting freely (sociology, literature, arts) over long periods of time (history) through to simpler living things (biology) and non-living molecules (chemistry) down to the simplest of particles in highly controlled environments (physics), more and more students tune out. There seems to be two major reasons for this:

• Most people are interested primarily in the business of life: people and other living things. The further down that list you go the less prominently these things feature.
• At school, you don't really ‘do’ science. You study it. You don't spot new patterns. You learn about old patterns that someone discovered hundreds of years ago.

Recent developments in the school science curriculum, like the new GCSE introduced in September, have tried to address the first point by emphasising the social implications of scientific discovery and discussing contemporary scientific issues: climate change; genetic engineering; mobile phone emissions. These are the things that real living people are talking about now. Research has suggested that this approach increases interest in science-related issues but does nothing to promote the image of science as a force for good in the world. If students see all the major scientific themes in terms of the harm done to society, they may be deterred from pursuing a scientific career.

The second point is addressed by allowing the students to do experiments. But experiments in the classroom are often difficult to set up and you still can't allow the students to really experiment. A real experiment means trying things to see what will happen, and children just love doing that. What happens if you drop a glass beaker from a height of 1.5 metres? What happens if you attach a thick piece of wire between the terminals of a Nickel-Cadmium rechargeable battery? (Answers at the end of this article.)

With a finite equipment budget, limited time, a curriculum to follow and health and safety laws, what is generally given to the students is a story through which they must ‘walk’. They can look right and left but they must not stray too far from the path. They are required to perform well-defined actions using a fixed set of apparatus and, though they are not explicitly told the result they are expected to achieve, it is fairly obvious whether they have got the ‘right answer’. The cry “the experiment didn't work!” (meaning that it did not give the standard result) is often heard from students in practical classes.

Of course, it is difficult to see how it could be otherwise, because of point two, above. They are not doing an open-ended experiment simply to see what happens. They are generally reproducing a classic experiment from days gone by in order to confirm the standard result and gain experience of the art of measurement and observation.

This kind of practical work has to be done, but that can still leave room for the kind of ‘play’ which shows why the original scientists did those classic experiments in the first place – curiosity. The trouble is, play can be messy and, with no discipline at all, may not lead to much in the way of memorable discovery.

Step forward computer simulations and games. At its best, simulation can provide an environment in which to play where there are constraints to what you can do but they are not too obvious. Constraints must exist because it is not possible to fit the whole universe into a computer.

The creator of the real universe doesn't seem to care that we don't ever see more than our own tiny corner of it, but the creators of artificial universes do. So a large number of modern games opt for surprisingly severe constraints. They do essentially the same thing as a school science experiment. There is a story to tell with a beginning, a middle and an end. The author is keen that you don't miss anything and that you get the point – understand the plot. So you are typically given a view of a stunning 3D world but only allowed to move through it along a narrow winding path whose walls take the form of things like un-jumpably deep crevaces or un-swimmably wide seas.

Simulations for education don't always have to do this because they don't always have to be telling a story. They can simply exist to allow exploration and discovery in a safe environment.

The software used in schools tends to go down one of two paths. There are the purpose-built simulations designed to illustrate a particular point and usually presented in a 2D cartoon-style user interface. Then there is the use of genuine games or game-like environments. These present the student with a more exciting, engaging experience but are generally not designed specifically with science simulation in mind. This is because creating high quality 3D modern games takes a lot of time and money, and games manufacturers don't regard education as a big enough market to recoup this investment.

Nevertheless, the huge popularity of games among precisely the section of the population we need to get engaged in studying science has prompted quite a lot of research into their use in education, and there is evidence that lively, colourful game-like products which provide an environment to explore rather than a one-dimensional path to walk down can succeed in firing the students' curiosity and turning them on to science. In school trials conducted while I was working at Immersive Education in Oxford, for instance, we found that the novelty of using game-like software in classes was enough to draw the students in, but that once they had played with the software with a small amount of suggestion and direction from the teacher, fruitful discussions about the underlying science of what they were experiencing often followed and could be used as a foundation for more conventional theoretical and practical work.

My current research project aims to bridge the gap between mathematically rigorous simulation and modern quality 3D games in an open experimental environment rather than a one-dimensional story: simulating some of the mess of the real world, because mess is fun. If this can be done economically I hope it can help to add some substance to the claim by its popularisers that science itself is fun.

Contact:

steve [at] mintyscience [dot] com
www.mintyscience.com

Answers:

a) The beaker generally breaks in a non-reversible way.
b) Ni-Cad batteries have very low internal resistance so are capable of delivering very large currents if short-circuited. The wire gets very hot and its insulation melts, possibly giving off amusingly noxious gases.

Some background information about me:

I am a software developer and former science/physics/maths teacher.

I started developing educational software working for Immersive Education in Oxford. There I co-wrote the Krucible suite of physics simulations and took part in associated school research with Winchester College.

I am currently working for another software company writing stock market software.

For research, curiosity, fun and, just possibly, future commercial distribution I am, in my spare time, currently writing a 3D science lab simulation with the aim of providing the kind of ‘controlled mess’ environment that I discuss in the article.

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