Why is Science Important?

Neil deGrasse Tyson is the director of the Hayden planetarium and the host of the new Cosmos series.  He spoke in this little 2-3 minute blurb about why everyone needs a basic understanding of science (science literacy).

Watch the video and tell me:  what are some other examples of situations in life where people might try to "pull one over on you" where an understanding of science and questioning would be helpful.  The example given in the video is of someone telling you that crystals will heal certain diseases.

Thoughts on Energy-Day One

So, to kick off the year, and our mini-unit introduction to energy and forces, students watched the "Honda COG" video, selected one portion of it, and diagrammed out the "energy story" of that portion.  Students were asked to list types of energy, describe what was happening to the energy, and where the energy was.

Here is the video:

And here are some sample whiteboards with the task students were asked to do:

We then discussed and acknowledged that students already had a pretty intuitive understanding of energy already.  Then, students were asked to come up with a definition for energy.  These are some sample definitions:

This idea courtesy of the Energy Project at SPU!