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I attended a Physics circus and they opened with the following joke. "Biology is green and slimy. Chemistry is stinky. Physics doesn't work." I thought that was pretty funny, and may help with perspective. Sometimes our kiddos experiments don't work and that bothers us or them. Apparently, even the professional experiments don't work every time. We can still learn from them, and even enjoy them. Several of the physics feats did not work, but we were still amazed. I have read some complaining about science being light or not working. It takes a "real" scientist to persevere and keep trying. The "ooh, ahh" might just be in the daring to try out the experiment. Hope you and your kiddos are inspired to keep daring to try flops and all-Green, slimy, stinky, and floppy.

This is very true. My dh is an environmental engineer and he says all the time that you learn more from the things that don't work than you do from the things that do. When things don't work you have to analyze what might have gone wrong and figure out how to adjust things the next time. He is involved in things like landfill clean ups and oil spill clean ups and he says that is very much part of what they do all the time is keep trying different things to see what is the most effective way of cleaning things up. Sometimes the things that seemed guaranteed to work don't work at all and the most far fetched ideas are the ones that work the best.
I think the inventor study in Rev to Rev shows many good examples of inventors who had to try for years to get the result they were looking for.

THanks for this reminder! I've been one of those moms frustrated by our continual failed experiments in Science, thinking that my kids can't possibly be learning anything from this. I't a great reminder for me that there is definitely learning to be done from even the "failures".

LOVE this...

chillin'inandover wrote:... It takes a "real" scientist to persevere and keep trying. The "ooh, ahh" might just be in the daring to try out the experiment. Hope you and your kiddos are inspired to keep daring to try flops and all-Green, slimy, stinky, and floppy.

So true!
In Christ,
Julie