Mystery Container

Last week in class we did an activity about inquiry. We received a little black and grey film container that had something inside of it, but we didn't know what. First we had to ask as many questions as we could about the container. My group got 51 total questions. Then, we had to try to figure out what was inside the container. We went and got different objects (a penny, wooden cube, marble, magnet, rubber stopper, paperclip, and a tiny screw) and then used different ways to try to figure out our container. We used a scale to weigh them and used our ears to try to hear a difference in sounds when we shook the containers. My group made over a dozen different combinations of the objects to try to figure out what was inside. We ended up thinking that our container contained a cube, penny, paper clip, and screw and it actually had two pennies! We didn't even think of the fact that there could have been two of something in the container.

Through this activity I learned that you have to really ask a lot of questions.  We have been taught to not ask questions, and we need to somehow reverse this because scientists ask questions all the time. Personally, I became afraid to ask questions in school because of a fear of being wrong. Now I know that in science it doesn't matter if you're wrong or right, you can always go back and start over again. I learned that you need to dig deep, think outside the box and really investigate when it comes to science. Sometimes you need to go back and try again in experiments. "Science is messy!"

Listening to try to hear a difference in noise between the containers.

What was actually in our container versus what we though.