A Study on the Messing About in the High School Physics -On the Learning of the Wave-

Abstract

When some experimental apparatus or materials are delivered to the students in a science classroom and the students are asked to do anything they want using those things before them, they spontaneouly start and continue to do free experiments in group or individually. The learning activities in such a classroom have been called "Messing about" by the Elementary Science Study group. It has been said that we could obtain many effective informations by observing, recording and infering the behaviors of the students engaged in Messing about activities. The auther have applied several times the same methods to the students, in his high school physics course at tha begining of the instruction of the wave. They were delivesed the springs for the wave experiment (slinky) each one to two students and allowed to engage in the Messing about. The data collected through the observation of the students' adtivities, were classified and arranged in the correlative charts or processed statisticaly in some cases, and discussed fully. The main results sugestive for the wave instruction are as follows. 1) Though the diverse activities the students had manifested were apparently orderless and rondom, there seemed to be a developmental suquence among these activities from the macroscopic point of view. The sequence was that they at first concentrated on the propagation of the waves on the spring, next the velocity of the waves, the reflection, the superposition, the standing wave, the decrease of the wave width etc. 2) There were many activities which had apparently no relationship with the wave learning but are inherently very effective for the understanding of the wave concepts. 3) The students have generally the tendency to interpret the wave phenomena with the concept of force. 4) Though there was not the dominant distinction between the sexies, the boys observed the wave phenomena more in detail than the girls.