UE2: Physics is the study of the invisible.

Episode name: UE2 120628 1037 T7 Study of the invisible

(Loose) transcript: [00:00:00.00] Gayle: The thing that when she was talking about conceptual models, because of my background I went to conceptual art in my head.  You know, cause it's like.
Sherry: Right, right, right.
Gayle: Conceptual art, it's just ideas.
Sherry: Uh huh.

[00:00:11.26] Gayle: And they don't, all those ideas don't have to be executed because some of them aren't good.
Sherry: Worth it, no.
Gayle: Yeah.

[00:00:18.22] Tim: And even some of the ones that are executed aren't worth it.
Gayle: Exactly.
(Sherry laughing.)
Gayle: I was working on my MFA, and I was like, well...

[00:00:24.10] Sherry: And then how many of them are trash-canned cause you don't think they're good and they really would have been, you know!
Tim: Oh, an artist never throws away anything.
Gayle: Their mother does.
(Laughing.)

[00:00:35.15] Tim says something inaudible, raises eyebrows, so I think it's a joke.
Sherry: I meant the mental image.  I meant the mental image that didn't get down.  Hmmhmm.
Gayle: That's why you have a sketch book.
Tim: But you know, artists take years and years and years playing with their concepts.  Why not do the same in the classroom, the science classroom?

[00:00:52.16] Gayle: Clearly they do (inaudible).  My ex-father-in-law is a physicist.  (Inaudible) brutal.
Tim: That's interesting.
Gayle: Well, a physicist and a misogynist.  (Looks around, laughs.)
Sherry: How do you talk to a physicist?

[00:01:09.21] Gayle: At lunch, (he said?) would you like to look at this book while we talk?  It's like, okay David, that's not nice.
Eleanor: One minute, wrap up whatever you're talking about.
Gayle: So this is going to be my Facebook post for tonight: Physics, the study of the invisible.  (Laughs)
Tim: Uhhhh...

[00:01:32.14] Gayle (mimicking Tim): Uhhhhh.
Tim: I bet there's a lot of study of the invisible.
Gayle: There is.  Study of the invisible.


My commentary: In the twenty minutes or so preceding this episode, Gayle (on right), Sherry (on left), and Tim (on left) have been discussing (off and on) the metacognition questions that they answered the prior afternoon.  Tim and Gayle responded to the questions about instructional strategies, and Sherry answered the questions about nature of science.  During their discussion, they discuss the value of going beyond experimentation to develop mental models for what they observed.  They say that it promotes sense-making and meaning-making, but it takes a lot of time, and time is something they don't have much of in their classrooms.

A few minutes later, Gayle compares mental models in art and in science.

I clipped this because I liked the sound byte at the end: "Physics, the study of the invisible."  At the time, it felt like Gayle's "model for what a mental model is" was matching what I think Eleanor was trying to get at all day on Wednesday.  But then, watching it again, it feels all awkward, especially when Tim responds with "Uhhhhh..."  And watching it again, I caught all of the half-inaudible references to Gayle's father-in-law.  (Maybe that's what made the end so awkward.)  Now I'm not really sure what to do with this clip.