Boys are better at physics because they can projectile ‘pee’ up walls, claim controversial academics
Can you imagine a more click-worth headline for physics educators?
Well, the original article written by the “controversial academics” has a better one:
Taking the Pee Out of Physics: How Boys are Getting a Leg Up
They’re both worth reading, but the short version is this: the simple biological act of peeing-standing-up may be giving boys a conceptual advantage in the first chapters we teach in physics, involving kinematics and projectile motion. Taken to its extreme: let’s say every boy pees 5 times a day from age 3 to age 16 or so when he takes his first physics class. So he’s seen (and controlled) roughly 25,000 more projectile paths than every girl.
Girls throw things and play sports and squirt water, you say. Of course they do. But do they throw 27,000 more things than boys? No. The researchers suggest that this discrepancy puts girls at a conceptual disadvantage in the first weeks of physics, and may turn them off of it altogether. They suggest that physics educators might do better to focus on a more gender-neutral topic at the beginning, like energy or momentum.
Where is the P in Physics, really?
So, I read these articles and engaged in some light arguments about whether it’s true or not, and whether that should mean that physics department men’s rooms might be cleaner than those in other departments. And then I kept thinking like a science educator. How often do we call on prior knowledge of observations in the world when we are teaching?
What has “every kid” done by the time they are 16?
Every kid comes to us with different experiences. Some are predictable based on what you know about the kid’s background (or gender, or whatever), and some are not. In my first years teaching high school physics, specifically when we got to the chapter on torque, I wrongly assumed that my students had played on a seesaw. The small difference between the years of their childhoods and mine had seen the removal of all of the seesaws from the nation’s playgrounds, evidently. The crushed ankles and concussions suffered by my generation had precipitated a change that denied these (just 6 years younger) kids of that experience.
“Did you ever get on the seesaw with your much smaller friend?”
(Blank teenage stares.)
“You know, when you and your little friend or cousin or whatever can’t have fun on the seesaw because your masses are different? And the bigger person has to move toward the center? … You know, a teeter-totter?”
“Ms. B, what’s a seesaw?”
Assumptions about early childhood
The world changed in that moment. I imagined thousands of excavators removing thousands of seesaws from thousands of playgrounds and replacing them with sterile balance beams eight inches high.
Source?
It happened again when I referred to another piece of playground equipment later in the year, during a unit on rotational motion. The merry-go-round. They had no idea what that was like. (“With horses?” No. With danger and high rotational speeds and the wind in your face and your ornery friend who won’t stop pushing even when you think you’re going to puke.)
Source?
It happened again when I moved from Michigan to Tennessee and asked the kids about the friction on icy sidewalks. Again, no idea. They had no experience with that — or at least not enough to form any conceptual understanding of how friction stops sliding.
There’s been plenty of work on the psychological and physical hazards of removing risky play from childhood, but I’ve never seen anything on the possible academic effects, especially in science.
At the same time, there was another shift. My students started believing what they saw on screens as much as if they had seen it in real life. Live demos and YouTube demos and simulated demos became equivalent. This was great for my budget, since I could now use university demo videos or interactive simulations instead of buying and setting up my own equipment! But it also made me wonder where this blind faith in the screen might lead.
As kids’ lives become increasingly digital, are they missing experiences that physics teachers will assume they have had?
Physics is on the Playground
There’s great physics to be learned on the playground. That campus that lacked seesaw and merry-go-round DID have a swing set. We spent one glorious class playing with periodic motion on the swings. Students made the swing chain shorter and measured what happened (period decreased). They put big and little people on the swing and measured what happened (no effect on period). We pushed the swing at its resonance frequency (increase in amplitude) and then at something other than its resonant frequency (chaos and hilarity and laughing teenagers).
Here’s the takeaway message for physics educators AND parents. Those early childhood experiences matter. Play matters. Tinkering matters. Being unscheduled and bored matters. The things a kid observes in those moments go into their brains and stay there, to be recalled later, maybe in the first few weeks of their first physics class. The world changes fast, and early childhood goes by in a flash. Parents – let little kids (and big kids) do that stuff, even when it’s not 100% safe. Teachers – don’t assume your students have had the same experiences you did. When you need to, fill the gap with some play time.
What experiences did you have as a little kid that may have impacted your education or career years later? Do your kids or students have the same opportunity?