How can we help kids get into the habits of looking for all possible causes and counter examples to problems?

>On 02/10/2011 09:07 a.m., Maria Droujkova wrote:
>...I have never had to do anything with REASONS for seasons or phases of the moon, outside of curriculum design. Have you?
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One reason to think about  phases of the moon on our normal life is the fact that people on the north hemisphere see the moon "upsidedown".  Or the opposite: people on the southern hemisphere see the moon "upsidedown".

We can use that knowledge on our normal life: On the calendar we can see the icons of phases of the mooon, but those icons were designed by northern people, with  the crescent moon like a "D" and the Waning Moon like a "C", but in the southern hemisphere is the opposite, crescent moon is a "C" and waning moon is a "D". (the people that designs calendar on the south repeat like parrots the things that northern people designs, so they draw the moon in the opposite way....)

In northern hemisphere the mooon is liar, because she is a "C" when she is "de-crescent", and she is a "D" when she is Crescent, but here on the south the moon tell us the truth.

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For example: a child in Uruguay could take a picture of the moon and send to a child in Canada,  the same day, so they can compare that fact. and  maybe another child on the equator  can send another picture that shows the moon on the middle, like an "U".

That is an exercise that children have to think, not only repeating something like parrots , things that they hear from the teacher.

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Another fact about seasons and our normal life:  if you are on the same longitude, you don't have the sunset at the same time, ¿why is that????

ANd more interesting: on some dates of the year the sunset is on the same hour, but not all the year... ¿why?
There are only two days on the year that this happens.

For example, the longitude of boston is almost  the same as Chile, and now the sunset on both places are almost at the same time, children can control that sending them an e-mail, o chatting.

That is because it began  the spring on the south and fall on the north.
If you make the same experiment on Christmas, the sunset on Boston is 2 hours before that the sunset in Chile ¿why is that?
If a child on BOston chat whit a child on Chile, the child on chile have the sunset, but the child on boston had the sunset 2 hours ago.

the answer is the same as the answer about the season: the tilt of the earth.

That kind of experiment was theoretical some years ago, but now it's a normal thing with the internet and the XOs.

That fact is very clear if you see it on Google earth, with the sun turned "on", and you look the earth thousands of Km away, like a satellite. If you move the timeline you can see it very clearly.



Paolo Benini
Montevideo

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