Course Objectives

This is a nonscience major course (4 hours credit) designed especially for preservice education students desiring to be K-8 teachers, but the course is open to all college students and satisfies the college's area requirement for math and science. This will not be a boring lecture course with lots of mathematical derivations, problem solving homework, and incomprehensible labs with equipment that only marginally works (no dead animals will be cut up!) It should be different than any course previously taken. We will examine the central ideas in physical science. Preference will be given to those items covered in Virginia's Standards of Learning for grades K-8 (not high school physics!). The central ideas include motion, force, heat, energy, matter, electricity, magnetism, and light. For example, we will investigate the floating of Pepsi and Diet Pepsi cans in water to understand the concepts of mass, volume, and density. We will use a D cell battery, magnet, and wire to build an actual operating electric motor (wow, does that sound scary?) after we have completed our electricity and magnetism unit. We will pull cars along carpet and linoleum to study heat, energy, and friction.

The use of mathematics will be at a minimum, because concepts will be stressed, not equations. The three hour laboratory/discussion will allow students to work together in groups of 3-4 at a table doing inquiry-based, hands-on, simple experiments. The lab is three hours long, so that no lab reports done outside class will be required. The labs will be fun and exciting - often things that can be applied directly in grades K-8. Exemplary teaching methods will be used as a model for K-8 preservice teachers.

Demonstration experiments will often be done during the three hours of lecture each week, and students will work together at their seats analyzing and discussing results. Student work will be kept in a journal. Lecture is 1400-1450 TR, and the lab/discussion section is 1300-1600 on Wednesday. Students must take the lab/discussion section.