Elizabeth Cavicchi

Experimenting with magnetism: Ways of learning of Joann and Faraday

This paper narrates learning as it evolved through experimental work and interpretation in two distinct investigations: the explorations of permanent magnets and needles conducted by a student, Joann, as I interactively interviewed her, and Faraday’s initial experimenting with diamagnetism, as documented in his Diary. Both investigators puzzled over details, revisited their confusions resiliently, and invented analogies as ways of extending their questioning; “misconceptions” and conflict were not explicit to their process. Additionally, Faraday formed interpretations—and doubts critiquing them—that drew upon his extensive experience with magnetism’s spatial behaviors. These two cases suggest that physics instruction could include opportunities for students’ development of their own investigatory learning.

Faraday and Piaget: Experimenting in Relation with the World

The natural philosopher Michael Faraday and the psychologist Jean Piaget experimented directly with natural phenomena and children. While Faraday originated evidence for spatial fields mediating force interactions, Piaget studied childrens cognitive development. This paper treats their experimental processes in parallel, taking as examples Faradays 1831 investigations of water patterns produced under vibration and Piagets interactions with his infants as they sought something he hid. I redid parts of Faradays vibrating fluid activities and Piagets hiding games. Like theirs, my experiences showed that incomplete observations and confusions accompaniedand facilitated

Nineteenth-Century Developments in Coiled Instruments and Experiences with Electromagnetic Induction

Summary Faraday demonstrated electromagnetic induction in 1831 using an iron ring wound with two wire coils; on interrupting battery current in one coil, momentary currents arose in the other. Between Faradays ring and the induction coil, coiled instruments developed via meandering paths. This paper explores the opening phase of that work in the late 1830s, as the iron core, primary wire coil, and secondary wire coil were researched and differentiated. ‘Working knowledge’ (defined by Baird) gained with materials and phenomena was crucial to innovations. To understand these material-based interactions, I experimented with hand-wound coils, along with examining historical texts, drawings, and artefacts. My experience recovered the historical dead-end of two-wire coils and ensuing work with long-coiled single conductors initiated by Faraday and Henry. The shock and spark heightened in these coils provided feedback to the many instrumental configurations tested by Page, Callan, Sturgeon, Bachhoffner, and others. The continuous conductor differentiated into two segments soldered together: a thick short wire carrying battery current and a long thin wire for elevating shocks (voltage). The joined wires eventually separated, yet their transitional connection documents belief that the induced effects depend on continuity. These coiled instruments, with their intertwined histories, show experimental work and understandings in the process of developing. Seeing the nonlinear paths by which these instruments developed deepens our understanding of historical experiences, and of how people learn.

Experiences with the magnetism of conducting loops: Historical instruments, experimental replications, and productive confusions

This study investigates nineteenth century laboratory work on electromagnetism through historical accounts and experimental replications. Oersted found that when a magnetic needle was placed in varying positions around a conducting wire, its orientation changed: in moving from a spot above the wire to one below, its sense inverted. This behavior was confusing and provocative. Early experimenters such as Johann Schweigger, Johann Poggendorff, and James Cumming engaged it by bending wire into loops. These loops, which increased the magnetic effect on a compass placed within, also provided evidence of their understanding and confusion. Coiling conducting wires around iron magnetized it, but when some wires coiled oppositely from others, the effect diminished. This effect confused contemporaries of Joseph Henry who made electromagnets, and amateurs later in the century who constructed multisection induction coils. I experienced these confusions myself while working with multilayer coils and induction coils th...

Introductory Paper on Critical Explorations in Teaching Art, Science, and Teacher Education

The authors of the three papers in this issue discuss and analyze the practice underlying “critical exploration,” a research pedagogy applied in common within their separate art, science, and teacher education classrooms. Eleanor Duckworth developed critical exploration as a method of teaching by involving students so actively and reflectively with a subject that they have “wonderful ideas” that arise from their own questioning. Teachers who encourage critical exploration support their students in encountering complex materials, experiencing confusion, considering multiple possibilities, and constructing new understandings. Teachers refrain from providing answers, or even implying that there is an acceptable answer or technique, and instead facilitate the personal process of development that Jean Piaget, Bärbel Inhelder, and others documented and analyzed. Applying Piagets findings requires teachers to sustain what David Hawkins described as “triangular relationships” of trust and respect among teacher, learners, and subject matter. The three classroom studies that follow narrate these exploratory qualities in the contexts of middle school girls learning Chinese brush painting, undergraduates investigating mirrors, and teacher education students exploring seeds, pendulums, and the moon. In teaching art and science via critical exploration, curiosity and a sense of beauty reinforce one another, and open a window into the processes of—and connections between—art and science.

Playing with Light.

Abstract The authors conducted action research by developing workshops that involved teacher-participants in their own exploratory learning. The authors facilitated participants in researching of what they noticed, and wanted to understand about light and shadows by structuring the environment, and the questions that wereasked of them, in ways that integrated practices of teaching into those of researching. During the workshops, transitions evolved in how participants used materials to make light and dark effects and interacted with each other. Transactions also occurred in how the authors intervened to teach and research what participants did, and to encourage their reflective observations. It is proposed that such explorations offer new beginnings for extending understandings of physical phenomena and of the world, as made through our actions and thoughts.

Classroom Explorations With Pendulums, Mirrors, and Galileo’S Drama

Ordinary things pass under our notice. We may assume we know what to expect from them, without ever having set aside the space to scratch beneath those unexamined assumptions, contemplate the behavior and wonder what is going on. Through carving out space for observing and rethinking everyday things, scientists in history generated questions and understandings that unsettled views prevailing at their time. In the swinging of a pendulum, Galileo gained evidence that contributed to new means of investigating and comprehending motions and relationships in the world. Galileo’s trial thrust into prominence the inextricability of that scientific undertaking from a wider matrix of beliefs, pressures and experiences; its reverberations extend across subsequent science. This paper follows students in my science class as they came to their own curiosities about ordinary things and experienced these curiosities in relation to Galileo’s researches and his trial.

Charles Grafton Page's Experiment with a Spiral Conductor

In the 1830s, American experimenter Charles Grafton Page pioneered electromagnetism, developing instruments, experimental practice, and understandings that were foundational for nineteenth-century technologies such as the telegraph and induction coil. While a student, Page detected electricity in a spiral conductor where direct current had not passed and no one expected current to be. He felt bodily shock and saw sparks. This paper explores that experiment through historical accounts and my own reconstruction of it. Page opened up boundaries in the physical circuit and cultural outlook that others treated as closed. New possibilities emerged; by tolerating the ambiguity that accompanied them, Page improvised fluidly and was able to make further discoveries. In recreating his experiment, I encountered variable signals. Like Page, I developed lab techniques that generated unexpected effects and questions. This study shows how opening up physical and cultural boundaries brings to light investigative possibilities not apparent before, possibilities which can become entry points for further exploration.