Incredible day!

I thought this morning was incredible. The field notes (I prefer "analytic field notes" to convey that they are not even attempting to be unbiased!) --- so --- The analytic field notes are peppered with "great" "awesome" "I love it" and "joyous!"

Some interesting things to note:

• When does Hunter choose to leave the table? - I feel like it must take incredible self-control to walk away when things are so cool - but he does seem to leave at a time when his leaving is minimally awkward. Maybe he leaves when the right question has been found rather than a right conclusion?
• Stamatis mentions that there is something that needs to be resolved before moving on (10:30-ish), and this feels like something he has decided by looking from the outside in (knowing the full energy/work story) rather than the inside out (that is, not knowing the whole story and trying to decide how to progress). The group is fine with leaving it unresolved, with the possible exception of Lezlie. What kinds of things would I think "need to be resolved" to "move on" - and what is the imagined trajectory? I think it differs greatly from Stamatis's perspective on this question, and I think it's something that I'm still learning how to navigate - how to ditch the logical path in favor of the organic one.
• When discussing the Gaussian Gun, my group immediately talks force - it feels like what I would do, too - energy can't help me figure out what should happen (not in a away that would feel like I "get it") - and when I do think of energy I think of wells and steepness and sliding down slopes in a kind of energy space. When I look at that ball fly off I think it was pushed by something stronger than could possibly have been there, and I was to find out how that can be. It actually takes a while before they talk energy and it would be interesting to see what makes them switch. They acknowledge some ookieness with energy (more pot. energy when less force, for example) and do a little reconciling of force and energy, but really begin to tackle the question of where the energy is (field? object? system?). It's a super sophisticated conversation.
• There are moments of just laughter and joyousness that I noted -- where the kind of fun they're having is real intellectual play, with jokes and ideas -- it would be interesting to look and see if this helps diffuse (defuse?) the tension of argumentation and signal "we're still playing"? It doesn't seem forced, though, it's really just play.
• There's really something to this Gaussian Gun question - there are intuitive reasons to believe both answers, and figuring out which makes more sense taps into pretty big ideas. I try in my inquiry class to start with complex phenomena that need explaining -- where there's clearly an "I-don't-get-this" going on that can take a long time to unpack into simpler problems that we can figure out. I think it really matters - doing inquiry this way - and we can say that it's the "real world example" or "provides relevance" but I think ti's something else- maybe rigor? knowing that you don't know? but it's also related to the sense of play, I think. Anyway, this Gaussian Gun is great. (was there a worksheet with it? was that helpful?)
• Joel has a really weird role at the table. He seems to usually interject to teach, asking leading questions rather than genuine questions. There was a period today when I thought he was actually playing around with an idea as he spoke (rather than having figured out the idea) -- and I was sad to see that the group didn't engage with that idea. But I wonder if his role will be shifting soon. Seemed like he might start veering towards playing with ideas aloud.
  

Anyway, I'm just about to scrap my entire plan for next semester (which starts in 10 days) and try this out-- maybe starting the whole year with the Gaussian Gun.