On the second day of class, there was an episode that really caught my eye. Four teachers were putting together an Energy Theater, and decided to intentionally break ET rules to represent the motion of the mousetrap car. After running through their ET for the first time, they realize that they had unintentionally broken another rule and decide to rectify it. It was interesting to see the rules that they were okay with breaking and those that they weren't okay with breaking. I also found their dialogue with their eventual audience throughout this entire clip interesting. Let's take a closer look. Here is their initial ET.
Part of the intentional rule breaking was that they treated the parts of the car differently. The arm spinning represents the wheels' kinetic energy while the arm arc-ing represents the kinetic energy of the lever arm. This represents their non-conventional energy story- which separated energy in different parts of the car. At 0:42, Jessica almost proudly comments, "People are gonna argue with us." Akbar responds, "Which is good." While planning, they had also intentionally decided to use no ropes. In the next clip, they realize that their representation has another issue- because their arms slow down, they are not each representing one energy unit (this is obvious in 0:34-0:38 of the first clip).
In the clip above, Kim points out that they are not still one unit of energy the whole time because they are slowing down. They then spend some time trying to work around the rule- Jessica proposes that they start out as two units of energy. Kim brings up and rejects the idea that they could say they are low on people. Finally Sam jumps in and leads them in a new representation that obeys the one-unit rule.
I'm wondering why they decided to follow the one unit of energy rule when they were intentionally breaking others. They wanted their representation to show their non-conventional energy story, so my guess is that the one unit rule does not need to be broken to tell the story. There seemed to be concern about how the audience would receive it too. Maybe they did not want the audience to get caught up in this rule.
What I found really interesting was that the one-unit rule did not come up until after the first run through of ET and how it was sort of resisted and then eventually taken up. It sounds like a motivating factor is how the audience would receive their ET. Before they make modifications, Kim says things like "It would be more understandable..." "It makes it harder to give the case..." After modifications, Jessica says "Less arguable... I like it." It seems like they are weighing their representation with possible complaints from other teachers. I'd be interested to see more instances of teachers holding themselves accountable to their audience when designing ET.
If I understand correctly, the two rules being broken are 1) use ropes to denote objects (or parts of objects) and 2) each person represents one unit of energy.
ReplyDeleteIf I were in the teachers' position I would feel more comfortable breaking 1) than breaking 2). Rule 2) holds a clear physical significance - energy must be conserved. Rule 1) feels more like a representational rule to me. Before doing any ET you might not always think about energy being 'inside' objects but once you have been doing ET this may start to seem 'obvious' which would lessen the apparent need for ropes.
The concern still seems to be about 'what will the other groups think' but it seems reasonable to me that in having this concern obeying rule #2 would be considered more important than obeying rule #1.
This is really interesting, Gina! I noticed three things when I was reading and watching:
ReplyDelete(1) I wanted to know _why_ rule-breaking in ET is particularly interesting to you.
(2) I felt like the text in this post really helped me to understand the video.
(3) Re: Alex's response -- I see a third 'rule' being broken, although I'm not sure it's really a rule: that the same unit of energy is represented in different ways.
Amy, I am not sure I understand what you mean by the same unit of energy is represented "in different ways". Do you mean that they are energy and then they are movement instead of energy or something?
ReplyDeleteYes, they do break the rule that the same unit of energy is represented in different ways. They represent kinetic energy in both the lever arm swinging motion and the wheel spinning motion.
ReplyDeleteAlex, I think you're right in that the conservation rule is more important physically than the ropes. I'll be spending more time thinking about the discussion that led up to this representation and get back to you on the justification to not use ropes.
Ah, that totally makes sense - it was like they were using the motions to represent the location and form instead of just the form. But they only do this for the KE in the middle because in the end they separate the thermal energy into two different locations - like the ropes reappear. I think they still have the rules in their brain, but they are combining two of them into movement instead of separating them into objects (ropes). What do you think?
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