She Tweeted You With Science! 07/04/2012
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Lesson: Meaningful Metrics with Dramatic Demos
“Many teachers feel inclined to teach, as part of their intro to science, a comprehensive unit on “The Metric System,” where they expect students to learn all the metric units and their prefixes, for linear, volume, mass and temperature measurements, and even their conversions to English units. Unfortunately, most of this will never be used (in class or out), and students perceive this as so much pointless memory work, (read “science is a pain!”)
Why not just introduce the metric units that you will be using, as you need them, then USE them! This is much less painful to all, and logical for the kids, plus they practice and actually learn the units”
Posted on July 4, 2012, in Uncategorized. Bookmark the permalink. 1 Comment.
I never discuss the English system in my chemistry classes with the one exception of occasionally making reference to Fahrenheit to give students a better frame of reference for ambient conditions. I like to teach SI Units and conversions early on so I can get students familiar with dimensional analysis. Getting the past the math bogey-man makes math intensive chapters a little easier later on.