As a teacher one of the most enjoyable experiences is watching a ‘lightbulb’ moment, when a student suddenly has their notion of the world tipped on its head to some degree and an old understanding replaced by a new and more fascinating one.
In recent times I have had discussions with students that have been like lighting a fire. An idea mentioned or explored that ignites conversations and comes back to you from another student on the other side of the room or in the playground.
Some of the more engaging talking points have included:
* that you can never actually touch anything else – what you feel is your outer electron cloud repulsing against that of another object’s electron cloud (this one led to a lot of ‘test’ high fives);
* stuff (matter) is mostly empty space – your body emptied of all its empty space would only be the size of a pinhead;
* that our sun, Sol, is primarily green, not yellow. It is actually all colours but its peak output is green and it only looks yellow thanks to our blue sky;
* frogs use their eyeballs to push their food down to their stomachs … this food is often their own skin which they shed and eat every three days, and;
* your brain ‘pauses’ your vision until sound catches up. Light travels much faster than sound – if someone speaks to you the vision of their lips moving reaches your eyes much faster than the sound reaches your ears. If your brain didn’t wait for the sound before playing the images the whole world would always be ‘out of sync’.
The world never has to be a boring place again …
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