Matt drew this picture again on the new white board with their final representation. While he was doing that, Mary Sue watched very thoughtfully, and eventually said:
But don't you think it's fascinating that you thought up this diagram that is a brand-new diagram that none of us have ever seen before and you just thought it up and made it? Don't you think that's kind of fascinating?
Apparently, she was really amazed by the fact that Matt had come up with a new representation/diagram "on the fly." In a later discussion about their whiteboard, she brings it up again (after Hunter asks what might be so special about this whiteboard, since everybody had gathered around it):
Well, one thing I thought was interesting was that Matt drew this diagram - he drew it here, yesterday [pointing to the other white board from the day before] - (Hunter: Uh-huh...) and I was like, what are you doing, what is this, and it, (Hunter: Yeah...) sort of was a representation of the temperture, then he wanted to get rid of it, and I was like, NO! It's fascinating that you just came up with this diagram in your HEAD, that we'd never talked about anything like this, before (Hunter: Mhmm...) We gotta keep it!
I think it is awesome to see how some teachers are (still?) wondering about what's going on in other people's head, how it can be that someone came up with something without having talked about it with others before (reminds me of our previous discussion here). I'm not sure if she is a think-while-talker and is just totally amazed by Matt not having to talk about his idea of the new graphical representation, or if she just finds it amazing in general that there is stuff going on in humans' brains that we really don't know much about. Either way, I think it's cool that an educator, a school science teacher is fascinated by cognitive phenomena (like I think teachers, as any educators, should be in general, but mostly are not, in my experience, because they take a lot of things for granted without being curious, any more).
Could you please explain the diagram? I am enjoying figuring it out but want to hear what you know about its interpretation in class.
ReplyDeleteI started transcribing the dialogue in which Matt is explaining the diagram to Mary Sue, but I'm not finished with that. However, I have a transcript of a little dialogue between Matt and Lezlie, about the color coding, that reveals a little bit about the purpose of the diagram:
ReplyDeleteLezlie: So, tell us about the, you know, the color coding here, the blue versus red, so does... does this mean mooore, uhm...
Matt: Yeah, the way I thought it, (Lezlie: It[...]) was, that looking at the temperature of the coolant,..., yeah, uhm, that it's after the compressor it's really really hot, and in this process, it cools down, so it's higher pressure in here, but it cools down, so there is more, uhm, blue, 'cause it was cooling down, and then at the expansion chamber got, chamber got really cold, uh, and so it jumped down to really cold, and... Now, this part, originally I was thinking that it's, it's warmin' up, but we just talked about, it's actually doing a phase change, and, so, during the phase change, the temperature is really not changing. Uhm, it's a phase change that's happening, but, uh, we can th... I think we can think of this as being an internal (? could also be "a thermal") energy or something.
I will try to transcribe Matt's aforementioned explanation of the diagram and post it later.
OK, here comes the transcript of Matt describing the diagram.
ReplyDeleteMary Sue: Nooo, why don't you leave it there (?) (Matt: 'cuz, I feel like, this..., these two, this is, 'cuz...) You spent a lot o'time thinking on that, I think it's very nice, and I'm not, I don't really understand what it means, and now I'd like to find out.
Matt: So, [something].
Mary Sue: So, this is something about-
Matt: It is the temperature of the coolant.
Mary Sue: So, this is temperature.
Matt: Right.
Mary Sue: So here, the temperature is decreasing, and then here, it increases. (Matt: So...) Or here, it increases and decreases, it's less...
Matt: So, it's the coldest, right here.
Mary Sue: So, this is inside the fridge, this is the freezer.
Matt: Yeah, so like this one represents inside and outside. So, we want it to be the coldest just as it goes inside. As it's insiiide, it starts to warm up, so you get more red, 'cuz it's warming up, it's the f, the free-uh, the refrigerant is heating up inside, because it's making the refrigerator cooler.
Mary Sue: Mhmm...
Matt: So...
Mary Sue: But don't you think it's fascinating [... see above]
The interesting thing is that Mary Sue apparently was thinking about her fascination of Matt coming up with the diagram on the spot while he is still talking about the diagram, and talks about that, seemingly totally disconnected from what Matt was just saying (using the connecting word "but").
And all that happens in a little over a minute.