A fine day was recently had outdoors at Holiday Heights Elementary School, instructing 2nd grade students in the ways of mechanical energy by using a hand trowel to remove weeds. A hand trowel is the combination of two simple machines, a wedge and lever working together to make the work of weeding easier. The beauty of the trowels mechanics is in the ease of the use of force to perform a push or a pull to accomplish the needed task of weeding.
Often students ask “What is a weed?” I think that Ralph Waldo Emerson answered that succinctly when he supposed that “a weed is a plant whose virtues have not yet been discovered.” That statement leads to students asking “What is a virtue” and from there I can only add that it is a quality that the plant has; either the students understand that definition or my gibberish has them in a catatonic state because no further questions are entertained.
So, while the students were digging about with the trowels and pursuing scientific methodological analysis on energy, force, push and pull a teachable moment occurred…
Cotinis nitida appeared in the overturned soil of one student’s excavated area and its appearance changed the dynamics of the moment. Students were offered the experience of “challenge by choice” in that they could opt in to touch and caress said Scarabaeidae or pass it by.
Interested parties gawked and squealed as the squirming and wiggling six - legged hairy grub worm was passed along. When the viewing and handling moment happened upon one student he apparently did not take kindly to scientific inquiry of this kind as he promptly jumped up from his seated position, stepped back and declared in a voice loud enough to carry a city block, “Excuse Me, But Science Is Disgusting”.
I hope he likes math…