Investigative Science, Science 201, Spring 2009
Instructor
Nathan Moore, Assistant Professor
Physics Department, Winona State University
Office: Pasteur 152
Office Hours: MWF 10-12, 2-3, TR 11-12, also by appointment
Email: nmoore@winona.edu
What I'm reading...
John Deming, Assistant Professor
Chemistry Department, Winona State University
Office: Pasteur 336
Office Hours: TBA
Email: jdeming@winona.edu
Web: http://course1.winona.edu/jdeming/
Bob Kopitzke, Assistant Professor
Chemistry Department, Winona State University
Office: Pasteur 310A
Office Hours: TBA
Email: rkopitzke@winona.edu
Web: http://course1.winona.edu/rkopitzke/
Course Text and Required Materials
1. Required: Physical Science And Everyday Thinking, Herff Jones. This is the
main text that will use nearly every day in class.
2. Required: Lab Journal (a dedicated notebook for Scie 201, the bookstore has
some available)
3. Optional: The Self Sufficient Life, by John Seymour. One of the most underappreciated physics texts of the last 30 years, this book will supplement lectures
and lab. For more on why I value this book, see the following historical article.
4. Optional: A text on Physics. Although the Physics covered in 201 has stayed
pretty much the same for the last 150 years, and in a technical sense, most any
Physics text will serve as a sufficient reference. Good intro-level texts include:
The Feynmann Lectures, Matter and Interactions, I (Mechanics), Young and
Freedman, Serway and Jewitt, and Halliday and Resnick.
5. Optional: General Chemistry by Linus Pauling, Dover, 1988. Pauling was
awarded the Nobel Prize twice (Chemistry and Peace) and taught chemistry at a
few Cal institutions. This intro-level text is less than $20 and serves as a great
chemistry reference for the course. Most of the book is available online through
Google Books.
PSET Course Information
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Purpose of the Class and Learning Outcomes
The purpose of this class is to help you become familiar with the fundamentals of science in a
manner that also prepares you to teach science in your future elementary classroom. It is
important that elementary students be allowed and encouraged to explore their world and that
teachers of students at this young age support their curiosity. Too many students come to college
claiming to hate science. When pressed, many say that they had a miserable teacher in their K-12
years who didn’t answer their questions, or who made them memorize a textbook. Science is
critically important and the best way to understand our world. We want the future teachers (of my
children) to be enthusiastic about science so that their future students (my kids) will likewise be
passionate about science.
Skill goals:
At the end of this course, students will be able to:

synthesize diverse information to draw reasonable scientific conclusions and to
support those conclusions with evidence and scientific reasoning

solve simple mathematical problems

read, interpret and make graphs and diagrams

design, implement, and assess the effectiveness of science activities for
elementary school children
Content Goals:
At the end of this course, students will be able to:

Make connections between the macroscopic and microscopic worlds.

Use ideas from physics and chemistry to create testable explanations of
everyday phenomena.

Design and construct a simple experiment that can be completed in an
elementary classroom.
Grading
Your grade for this course is based on the following:
Item
Fractional Weight
In-Class activities and homework 0.2
Quizzes
0.10
Chapter Exams
0.40
Final (Physics portion)
0.15
Final (Chemistry portion)
0.15
The Physics final will come miday way through the semester. The Chemistry final will come at
the end of the class during finals week.
PSET Course Information
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University Studies
The purpose of the Natural Science requirement in the University Studies program is to provide
students with the tools to understand and be able to apply the methods by which scientific inquiry
increases our understanding of the natural world. Courses must be selected from an approved list;
departments normally included in the Natural Sciences are Biology, Chemistry, Geoscience, and
Physics.
These courses must include requirements and learning activities that promote students’ abilities
to…
1. understand how scientists approach and solve problems in the natural sciences;
2. apply those methods to solve problems that arise in the natural sciences;
3. use inductive reasoning, mathematics, or statistics to solve problems in natural
science;
4. engage in independent and collaborative learning;
5. identify, find, and use the tools of information science as it relates to natural
science;
6. critically evaluate both source and content of scientific information; and
7. recognize and correct scientific misconceptions.
Courses that satisfy the laboratory requirement in the Natural Sciences will additionally provide
students the opportunity to practice scientific inquiry through hands-on investigations and to
analyze and report the results of those investigations.
Appropriate uses of technology during class/lab:
1. Cell phones must be turned off during class and labs. You are not allowed to
send or receive text messages or phone calls during scheduled class time.
Students doing so will be asked to leave class for the remainder of the period
and will be unable to earn any points associated with all assessments given
during that class period. If a pattern of behavior emerges (i.e., two or more
infractions) the student forfeits his/her opportunity replace the lowest midterm
exam percentage with his/her final exam percentage.
2. Laptop computers must have their screens closed during class unless
specifically required to open them by the instructor. Students should plan for this
and print out all materials, notes, etc in advance. Any student opening his/her
laptop during class will be in trouble.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
The following is how the developers of our adopted
curriculum describe the class.
PSET Course Information
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STRUCTURE OF THE PSET COURSE:
This is an activity-based and discussion-oriented course with four major goals:
(1) Physical Science Content: To help you develop a deep understanding of physics and
chemistry ideas that can be used to explain interesting phenomena, and are related to
the ideas included in the elementary school science curriculum;
(2) Nature of Science: To help you practice and develop an understanding of how
knowledge is developed within a scientific community: that doing science involves
using evidence and creative thinking, that knowledge is established through
collaboration and consensus, and that science knowledge can change over time;
(3) Elementary Students’ Ideas: To help you understand the thinking of elementary
school children by observing (via video) and analyzing their discourse when they are in
the process of learning science.
(4) Learning about learning: To help you become more aware of how your own science
ideas change and develop over time, and how the structure of the learning environment
and curriculum facilitate these changes.
There will be very little formal lecturing in this course. Indeed, all class sessions will take place
in the lab. The basic aim of the PSET format is to allow you to take charge of your own learning,
with the instructor as a guide. During class you will spend most of your time performing
experiments, working occasionally with computers, and discussing ideas with your classmates.
We expect you to continue your learning at home through a series of carefully designed
homework assignments, many involving use of the web. We hope you will find many of our
teaching and learning strategies valuable and appropriate for you to use when you begin your
teaching career.
PSET Course Information
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The PSET curriculum is divided into the following chapters:
Chapter 1: Interactions and Energy
Chapter 2: Interactions and Forces
Chapter 3: Interactions and Systems
Chapter 4: Interactions and the Behavior of Gases
Chapter 5: Interactions and Physical Changes
Chapter 6: Interactions and Chemical Changes
The goal of each chapter is to have you develop a set of ideas that can be used to help explain
phenomena that will be explored within that chapter, as well as to consider issues of learning
science. There are three types of activities and homeworks within each chapter. The first several
activities are called Developing Ideas activities. During these activities you will perform
experiments to collect evidence in support of ideas that you will develop. The final activity in a
Chapter is an Applying Ideas activity. In that activity you will compare your ideas with those
developed by scientists, then apply the ideas to explain interesting phenomena. Sprinkled
throughout the curriculum are a series of Learning About Learning activities, some done during
class, most done for homework. During these LAL activities you are asked to think about your
own learning, the learning of children and/or the learning of scientists (namely, how they develop
scientific knowledge).
STRUCTURE OF THE PSET ACTIVITIES
Each individual activity consists of several sections with slightly different aims.
Purpose
A short introduction describing the aims of the activity and how it ties in to the topic. It also
poses the key question(s) for the activity.
Initial Ideas
Questions that give you a chance to express your own initial ideas on the topic of the activity,
before you do any experiments. These initial ideas are important, as they will form the basis on
which you build further understanding.
Collecting and Interpreting Evidence
Here’s where you do the experiments and record your predictions, observations and data that
provide the evidence to support or refute your ideas.
Summarizing Questions
Working together, the whole class will try to summarize what they have learned in the activity by
answering a few questions. You will hand in your responses to all these questions at the end of
each chapter (on the day of the test). You will receive up to 5 points per chapter, graded on
completeness.
Throughout the activities you will be writing answers to questions on the activity sheets
themselves. Three types of questions will be identified by small icons:
PSET Course Information
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Prediction Question. A chance for you to use your current thinking to anticipate what you
think will happen. In each case, your prediction should be justified in terms of your current
idea(s). This is a vital step in your learning and should not be “glossed over”. If the results
of an experiment do not agree with your prediction DO NOT go back and change it – this is
valuable evidence of how your ideas are evolving.
Observation Question: A place for you to record the results of experiments. These results
may take several forms, including describing observations, sketching diagrams, or
recording numerical values in a table.
Making Sense Question. This is where you get to interpret the results of experiments in
terms of your ideas. Do the results agree with your predictions, or not? If so, they provide
evidence to support your ideas. If not, maybe your ideas need to be modified.
REQUIRED MATERIALS:
Physical Science and Everyday Thinking, Chapters is available from xxxxx. A PSET Student
Resources CD is included as part of the materials. On this CD are Microsoft Wordcopies of all
the homework assignments, including videos (and transcripts) of children engaged in learning
science. Other course materials will be distributed to you as needed during the course.
It is strongly recommend that you purchase a 3-ring binder to hold the PSET curriculum
materials.
ATTENDANCE AND PARTICIPATION:
You will be primarily responsible for your own learning in this class. By engaging in meaningful
discussions with your group members, by actively participating in whole class discussions, and
by performing interesting experiments, you will develop with your classmates a set of ideas.
Similar to the way in which scientists develop ideas, your ideas will be based on evidence
gathered from the experiments you do. At appropriate times, you will be able to compare your
ideas with those developed by scientists. It is expected that except for some special jargon, the
ideas you develop with the class should be quite similar to the scientists’ ideas.
Because you will play such an important role in your own learning, and especially the learning of
your classmates, you are expected to come to class on time every class period and participate
throughout the period. Class will begin sharply at xxx. You will receive one participation
point for each class fully attended. If you are absent or more than 20 minutes late for class,
you will not receive the participation credit for that day. If you do miss class, you should
discuss what you missed with another student. You can come early to the following class to try
to make up some of the hands on experiments.
PSET Course Information
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HOMEWORK:
Homework will be assigned almost every class period and, unless otherwise stated, will be due at
the beginning of the following class period. Several homework assignments will require you to
run computer simulations on the web. The PSET simulator index page is at
http://cpucips.sdsu.edu/psetsims. If you do not bring your homework to class, I will accept it as
an e-mail attachment no later than midnight on the day it is due. (Electronic copies are available
on the PSET Student Resources CD) No credit will be given if the homework in not turned in by
then. If you are absent, you need to contact a fellow student to find out about the homework. On
the second day after the homework is due I will post answers on the web at
http://cpucips.sdsu.edu/psethw. Each regular assignment is worth 2 points and will be graded
according to whether you provided reasonable answers to all the questions.
For certain homework assignments you will be watching video and analyzing children’s thinking.
(We can refer to these as “Children’s Ideas Homework.”) Each of these assignments will be
worth 5 points: 2 points assigned for completeness, and 3 points for how well you support
claims you make about the children’s ideas. You need to cite appropriate sections from the
transcript and clearly explain how the transcript evidence supports your claims.
PSET Course Information
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