For this assignment, we were supposed to predict what was in a black container. Before that, we had to ask questions about the container. The interesting thing was when we were told to do that, many groups asked questions only pertaining to the items inside of the container instead of the container itself, which isn't that surprising because we have been taught to think about just what something is concealing instead of the object concealing the smaller objects. What I took away from this part of the lesson is when a science instructor instructs you ask questions about object(s) in front of you, ask as many questions as you can think of because there is no such thing as an out of line question in science. Our next task was to try to solve what was in the container given various items and a scale to measure the weights. Many people kept trying different combinations and putting it on the scale to no avail. As frustration stirred, the groups started to shake the containers to see if the items in the containers created similar pitches. Although loud, this proved to be effective. I'm not sure how close groups were to solving the mystery but my group was off by only one item and one ounce. What I learned from this is using multiple senses is much more effective than using only one, and that's what science is about. You never hear of scientists solving things by doing only one thing; they try things over and over again and backtrack until they find something an answer. This taught me a lot about the Inquiry Wheel because at lower levels, we strictly stuck to the scientific method, but the scientific method doesn't explain our process. This activity made us think, ask questions, backtrack, ask more questions, make predictions, use observations, and other scientific approaches. It may have been a basic assessment, but it informed me better about how science works.
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