Sawing Batteries and Microwaving Lightbulbs at the Exploratorium
January 2012
For this month’s spotlight, we’re introducing a community member that we admire for their innovations in science education: Anne Richardson. Anne has been working in science education since 2000 as a naturalist, curriculum developer, and educator. She now directs the Field Trip Explainer Program at the Exploratorium in San Francisco.
What motivates Anne is a commitment to the idea that people can and should be empowered to be in control of their own learning; regardless of prior interest or experience, anyone can become a science learner at any time in life if that’s what they want to do.
The Field Trip Explainers are a group of early-career educators who support students visiting the Exploratorium on school field trips. Explainers often do not have science backgrounds, but are interested in working with kids and in their own professional growth. The Explainers work and learn within a supportive community, and strive to replicate this safe and open learning environment for their students on the museum floor. Explainers are expert explorers, rather than content experts, and will readily answer students’ questions with, “Let’s find out together!” Anne is pleased to see Explainers learning alongside visiting students—looking up answers to new questions about carnivorous plants, making careful observations of sea urchins together, or giving students room to test their ideas about the movement of pendulums at the exhibits.
Anne’s favorite Explainer training sessions are the ones in which Explainers are able to investigate their own questions. Right now, the Explainers have become interested in figuring out how to make light bulbs, and have been experimenting with attaching various metal filaments to batteries inside of beakers filled with CO2. Their questions are supported whenever possible by other Exploratorium staff—one senior scientist sawed a battery in half for them to examine as they figured out the relationship between volts and amps. When one Explainer asked what would happen if we put a lot more power into a light bulb, the senior scientist said, “I know how we can answer this question”, and then put the light bulb in the microwave and turned it on. Don’t try this at home (because your microwave might explode), but it was amazing to see the argon gas light up inside of the bulb!