TechQuest CEP 810
Description A. The Need Here’s a story that will send a chill down your spine. When I was at university, we had to build electric circuits in the lab. One warning our lab assistant had given us was to make sure the capacitor was connected properly since it was a polarized device and would explode otherwise. My lab peer didn’t take the matter seriously enough and plugged the capacitor inversely ‘to get a good laugh at what would happen’. I can tell you we did everything but laugh when the capacitor blew up sending shrapnels everywhere; and shrapnels I would call them because the capacitor was big enough to have the effect of a small bullet. My friend, well, he got slashes all over his face, which could have resluted in the loss of one eye or both. The reason I am telling you this story is because there are times when students are completely oblivious to the dangers they are exposed to in the electric, physics or chemistry lab. And the incident at the university was not as serious as the one I had witnessed earlier in high school when a student in my class was about to accidentally mix the wrong proportions of oxygen and hydrogen in order to get water, an assignment our teacher had given us. I still remember the teacher literally jumping at my friend and snatching the beaker away from him. After a while, the teacher made a tiny demonstration with extremely small doses of oxygen and hydrogen that resulted in a loud ‘boum’, simply to show us how close we had been to real danger. After these two incidents, and another that I read somewhere about a student who got intoxicated by smelling a toxic substance in the lab, I kept trying to figure out ways to keep students motivated in experimenting in a safe environment. Thanks to the online experiences that I took in CEP 811, I can think of an excellent way to use Online Simulations. And I quote: ” (These) are a web-based recreation of an authentic experience.” What I have in mind is using online simulations to teach students lab experiments that could endanger their lives when mishandled. I have no intention of substituting lab experiments with online simulations. Rather, I would use online simulations to demonstrate to students the consequences of underestimating the dangers of lab experiments. After they have built an awareness of those risks, they could go back to experimenting safely in the lab. Another reason I thought of online simulations is because teachers don’t always have access to the lab. So an online simulation would be a nice way to prepare students for what’s awaiting them in the lab.
Created by: Jean-Claude Aura
Date: April 2009
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