(everyone will have to complete the assignment, but you get extra credit if it is done by Monday when we get back) It is actually due on Friday the 19th :)
Read the article (The article goes on pages 53-60)
Accept Defeat: The Neuroscience of Screwing Up
Then think about the following questions and respond to them on page 61 of your notebook.1.At first what did Penzias & Wilson think caused the noise in their radio telescope? So was the noise considered useful data? Why or why not?
2.How did Penzias & Wilson’s reaction to their unexpected data fit into Kevin Dunbar’s findings of how science experiments usually turn out?
3.What did Dunbar find out about what scientists usually do with unexpected data (“errors”)?
4.How do Dunbar’s findings (science’s “dirty secret”) compare with the experiments/labs you do in science classes?
5.Did Penzias & Wilson’s unexpected data end up being useful in their scientific careers?
6.Why did we have you read this article?
1. At fist Penzias and Wilson thought that their noise was man-made, an emanation from nearby New York City, or fallout from recent nuclear bomb testing. Their data was not useful because they could only pick up static.
ReplyDelete2. Most scientists start by blaming the lab which is what Dunbar states "lab fell apart." In this case they thought it had to do something with the environment which could be considered as their "lab."
ReplyDeleteIn the article it says that scientists first blame the method they used. Then they would repeat the experiment again carefully and if there is still something unusual they might fail to follow it up.
ReplyDelete4. The article states that "experiments rarely tell us what we think they're going to tell us." Unlike our school experiments scientists never really know what the results will be. Most of the time we already know the outcome of our school experiments.
ReplyDelete5. Penzias and Wilson's unexpected data did pay off later on in their careers because they won the nobel prize in 1978 for physics.
6. To teach us how scientists conduct their experiments and how even they can make a mistake or a wrong judgement like Penzias and Wilson. This article also teaches us about Dunbar and how he explains to us the dirty secret of science and what scientists do to unexpected data.
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