The Questions
- How old are you?
- Why are you at MSU today?
- What happens to the water when you wring a wet towel out?
- Why does water fall?
- What would happen if you wring a wet towel out in space?
- Earlier you mentioned gravity (assuming they did), is gravity everywhere?
- So, what is your understanding of gravity?
The Results
We asked five gravity-related questions to eight different people. Five of which were on campus for work, and three were MSU students.
With the first question, we found it interesting that all understood what would happen to the water in the towel, but some of them expressed this by focusing on how the water would exit the towel as opposed to how it would fall to the ground (or in a bucket, sink, etc.).
The second question was geared towards explaining this "falling" or "exiting" of the water from the towel; seven of our eight students used the key term "gravity" as the explanation of this phenomenon.
The third question took this concept out of this world! and to outer-space, thus testing their knowledge of gravity outside of the Earth's atmosphere. Again, seven out of our eight subjects used the word "float" when describing what would happen to the water. We now realize, that it would've been interesting to see what would've happened had we asked the students to draw their view of water floating in space. We discussed this at great length, since the word float can mean that the water would move up, out, down, etc. Due to the ambiguity of the term, we are unsure if the seven out of eight people actually knew what would happen or not. To clarify this, we would've given them props to draw out their vision of what would happen with water in space.
When prompted about where gravity exists, the majority of our subjects did not answer the question directly. Instead, they stuck to what they do know, and they explained that gravity does exist on Earth.
So for their overall understanding of what gravity is, the eight subjects answered in a variety of ways. The sixth subject had the most knowledge of gravity, but did not use either of the words "force" or "pull" in his description, though he showed his understanding of the concept. The other candidates, for the most part, used these two terms interchangeably or together to explain their general knowledge of gravity.
In conclusion, it is evident that at one point in their education, our candidates covered the unit on gravity. However, their responses showed that they did not make connections to the concept in order to internalize its true meaning, thus they did not fully understand the concept of gravity and do not have all of the knowledge necessary to thoroughly explain this scientific principle.
With the first question, we found it interesting that all understood what would happen to the water in the towel, but some of them expressed this by focusing on how the water would exit the towel as opposed to how it would fall to the ground (or in a bucket, sink, etc.).
The second question was geared towards explaining this "falling" or "exiting" of the water from the towel; seven of our eight students used the key term "gravity" as the explanation of this phenomenon.
The third question took this concept out of this world! and to outer-space, thus testing their knowledge of gravity outside of the Earth's atmosphere. Again, seven out of our eight subjects used the word "float" when describing what would happen to the water. We now realize, that it would've been interesting to see what would've happened had we asked the students to draw their view of water floating in space. We discussed this at great length, since the word float can mean that the water would move up, out, down, etc. Due to the ambiguity of the term, we are unsure if the seven out of eight people actually knew what would happen or not. To clarify this, we would've given them props to draw out their vision of what would happen with water in space.
When prompted about where gravity exists, the majority of our subjects did not answer the question directly. Instead, they stuck to what they do know, and they explained that gravity does exist on Earth.
So for their overall understanding of what gravity is, the eight subjects answered in a variety of ways. The sixth subject had the most knowledge of gravity, but did not use either of the words "force" or "pull" in his description, though he showed his understanding of the concept. The other candidates, for the most part, used these two terms interchangeably or together to explain their general knowledge of gravity.
In conclusion, it is evident that at one point in their education, our candidates covered the unit on gravity. However, their responses showed that they did not make connections to the concept in order to internalize its true meaning, thus they did not fully understand the concept of gravity and do not have all of the knowledge necessary to thoroughly explain this scientific principle.