With a partner, my secondary science methods students selected a tree and then combined their ample knowledge, creativity, and critical thinking and came up with several methods to determine the height of the tree.

Linda Dee and Karen Schedler were helping my students learn about Project Learning Tree (PLT) and its many science activities. My students now have the assignment to develop a lesson plan using a PLT activity and then teach a high school or middle school class using this lesson plan.

This class of students has already earned my respect for their knowledge, abilities, and great attitudes, but it was still exciting to see them apply what they know with their creativity and critical thinking. Indeed the process was just as important as the result. Their tree-height-measurement methods included (a) having a partner of known height stand by the tree and estimating how many of them it would take to reach the top of the tree; (b) measuring the shadow length of the partner and the tree and using ratios; (c) holding a vertical ruler up, with the partner at the tree, and using the marking of the ruler to determine ratios for the heights, and (d) comparing the tree height to a building and then counting brick segments on the building to determine height. Of course, if a protractor was on hand we could have used the distance from the tree, angle to the top of the tree, and some trigonometry to make this estimate.

The tree height estimates were compared to a value found by using clinometers. These nifty devices, we were told, give a pretty accurate reading. You measure off 66 feet and look through the viewer with one eye and line up a horizontal line with the other eye. There were two scales for viewing the height of the tree, one in feet and the other in meters.  In many cases, my students’ estimates were pretty close to the clinometers’ readings.

I was glad to see my students using metric measurements because we had talked about this before our spring break. My advice is to have their future students do all their measurements using the metric system and NEVER convert back into the imperial system. But with the “66 feet” distance and foot scale on the clinometer, it seems like our forestry colleagues, at least in the US, are not fully metrified. Prior to this, I had thought that the only people of science who were not completely immersed in the metric system were US meteorologists. It is obvious that some science traditions don’t change easily. 

SCIENCE EDUCATION, CRITICAL THINKING, and INQUIRY SKILLS

My wife suggested that we have lunch at Chase Field, the home of the Arizona Diamondbacks. There was no game today, but there is a Friday’s Restaurant where you can eat in the outfield and look out onto the field 364 days of the year.

Along the walls of the first and third base lines sat batteries of large spotlights on wheels shining on the field. These were brightly illuminated, so much so that they were hard to directly look at even though I was 400 feet away. I asked our server, a baseball enthusiast, about the lights and he told us that at some times during the day, parts of the field were in shadows, and these artificial grow lights were supplementing the natural light.

Looking out over the game-less baseball field, I thought about what our waiter said. I observed that every bit of the grass field was now being illuminated by the natural intense Arizonan sunlight.  Yes, this was mid-day and the sun was high in the sky, so I can accept that there would be shadows in the morning and evening. If we accept the idea that the light needs to be augmented, it would seem to me that the artificial light would benefit the grass more if it was only turned on in the mornings and late afternoon and directed at parts of the field that were actually in the shade. If you have ever experienced the intense, Arizona, mid-day, July sun shine on you, you know it packs serious energy. If the grass receiving this sunlight hasn’t slowed its photosynthesis because it is in survival mode from the intense heat, it seems safe to say, that the grass at this moment is optimally photosynthesizing with this intense natural light source.

So, it seems like an incredible waste of energy to shine grow lights during midday. In Arizona, utility rates are cheaper before 9:00 AM, which is another reason to shine the lights on certain parts in the morning. I won’t even delve deeply into the idea of whether parts of lawn that get shaded during different times of the day need light augmentation (my small lawn, which is the same Bull’s Eye Bermuda species as the stadium, does quite well with some parts getting lots of shade and I can assure you that professional ballplayers are no match in the trampling department to my energetic sons, their friends, and our young sheltie). Nor, will I delve deeply into the possibility of using reflectors to reflect natural light, for instance from the base path areas to areas that are sometimes in the shadows.

Eating my tilapia tacos, I thought about developing workforces with critical thinking and inquiry abilities and the importance of high quality science education.  If we apply critical thinking to the case of grow lights at Chase Field, what argument can be made for grow lights to enhance the midday sun?  Then after logical discussion, we should ultimately test our assumptions. The grounds crew could choose three of the shadiest areas, illuminate one with grow lights only when it is in the shade, illuminate one with grow lights only when it is in the sun and don’t artificially illuminate the other, and then compare the results. And as Sean, in the movie Jimmy Neutron, Boy Genius (2001) said, “Never argue with the data.”

Are we helping students leave our science classrooms being able to critically think, to have mindsets favorable to inquiry, and sufficient inquiry abilities? The grow lights at Chase Field may be a small example of misdirected technology, but many other technologies are certainly high stakes. Hopefully, we can work to avoid misdirected technologies through developing critical thinking and inquiry abilities in the future workforce. And to use a baseball line from Field of Dreams (1989), “If you build it” they will have tools for life long learning and decision-making.