What is Science Pickle?
Science Pickle provides in-depth, varied, and connectable learning activities. Create a path through the materials that help you connect the concepts in ways that make sense to you while going at a pace that allows you to make more connections to what you already know. Revisit challenging activities that use randomly generated scenarios to test your expanding skills and understanding.
Types of Activities on Science Pickle
Reading (100+ webpages and links to supporting websites): Written materials are an effective and efficient way to obtain information. Download or print to read when the Internet isn’t available.
Concept maps show how complex processes interact and are fantastic learning tools.
Illustrations and animations to visualize spatial and temporal patterns and trends that are discussed in the text.
Data visualizations and analyses: We are in the Information Age, and being able to work with data is an essential skill to develop, hone, and apply.
Math: If you work with data, you often mathematically manipulate and analyze the values.
Inexpensive experiments and activities with commonly available materials: It is incredible how our understanding changes when using hands-on experiences to explore a concept or process.
Videos to discuss and visualize complex processes simultaneously.
Software: We have quite a few web apps and five desktop programs that are categorized into four types of interactive tools to use on your computer or smartphone:
- Tools to make measurements to use in your research projects.
- Simulations: Change variables and see how the modeled processes respond.
- Practice problems: Unlimited randomly generated problems with solutions and feedback.
- Games: Test your skills and understanding while progressing through the game levels.
Challenges and self-graded assessments: Computer-based and hands-on activities where you need to decide how well you did.
Since our knowledge is a web of interconnected concepts and ideas, there are many ways to make connections as you learn. Discover the path that helps you make connections that make sense to you.
Intended Audience
- Middle and high school students looking for supporting materials for their learning in school, homeschooling, and independent study.
- Teachers looking for courses or for materials that support their curriculum with in-class materials and activities or take-home assignments.
- Lifelong learners of any age.
Topics on Science Pickle
Creative thinking involves learning, observing, and questioning.
Learning Resources
Learning: Begin consciously thinking about your learning process to become a better learner. Explore various tools that support your learning.
You As a Learner: Whenever we’re learning in the presence of others, we are vulnerable. Our abilities are on display when we have an audience, and this affects our learning, sometimes for the better, sometimes not.
Importance of Reading: There are many ways to take in information. This section focuses on the many pros of reading, making it an essential skill used throughout our lives.
Reading: Explore the process of reading.
Writing: The physical act of writing, particularly by hand, greatly aids learning.
Drawing: Drawing helps us focus on spatial details, patterns, and connections while also stimulating the reward-focused part of our brain.
Research: Going down a path with no immediate answers is a great way to expand your learning!
Concept Mapping: Want an amazing tool to visually and descriptively map out your understanding? Then this is the tool for you!
Observing Resources
Observing: Observing is essential for learning and creating since the senses provide the only conduits for information to get into our brain. Measure and develop your abilities to observe.
Our Senses: Explore the range of human senses, with a focus on vision. Measure several components of your vision to “see” what you are missing!
Perspective: Change your perspective, detect something new!
Technology: We observe so much more than humans can detect, organize, and analyze with technology.
Measurement: Data measured to an accepted scale have expanded how we observe.
Data, Graphs, & Functions: Organized and analyzing our measurements helps us identify patterns and possible causal relationships.
Contouring: A tool to find spatial patterns and relationships in multidimensional data.
Improving Observational Skills: We can change our conscious focus on processing sensory data, allowing us to improve how we make observations.
Questioning Resources
Questioning: Questioning is the process of requesting information, and it is one of the critical components for learning and creating original ideas. The key is to develop how well you ask yourself questions to become a more creative thinker.
Types of Questions: The type of question depends on how much information is requested and its purpose for being asked.
How Do You Ask Questions: Explore how you develop and respond to your self-directed queries.
Using Logic: Logic, which relies on using evidence in your thought process, provides one way to develop and test a question’s quality and usefulness before you ask it.
Looking for Patterns: Questions help you find a pattern, which is a regularity in the world in which one or more elements are predictable.
Questions and Numerical Data: Train yourself to recognize the patterns and randomness in numbers.
Strategies for Questioning: Explore strategies that optimize your ability to question based on your experiences and capabilities.
Earth Systems Table of Contents
Earth Systems: Explore how Earth’s energy flows, matter cycles, and life webs have supported continuous life on our planet for the past 3.8 billion years of its 4.5 billion year existence (~85%).
What is a System?: A system is an entity that maintains its existence through the mutual interaction of its parts, and each element is a system unto itself.
Coordinate System: How do we locate ourselves on this rotating spherical planet?
Energy: Investigate how energy creates continual movement of Earth’s materials around the globe, which sustains life on our planet.
Sun-Earth Connection: Examine how the Sun’s radiation drives many of the Earth’s surface processes through uneven daily and seasonal illumination cycles.
Star-Planet Connection: Explore Earth from a new perspective by considering how a star impacts its orbiting planets.
Vectors and Forces: Anything moving is described with a vector, and forces, which are vectors, change an object’s motion. Analyze the fundamentals of vectors and forces to apply to Earth’s systems.
Earth, Wind, and Forces: Explore how pressure gradient, Coriolis, friction, and centrifugal forces create wind on Earth.
Atmosphere: Explore the chemistry and energy of the Earth’s atmosphere.
Clouds: Research the critical roles of clouds in warming and cooling Earth.
Precipitation: Water is essential for all life forms on Earth, and precipitation is the delivery mechanism of water that supports life on land. Study how water is transported in our atmosphere around the globe.
Coming Soon: The Geosphere.
Philosophy
The goal is to support independent exploration.
Self-Paced Activities
When learning something new, answering quickly should not be the goal. Instead, develop your ability to connect as much of your existing knowledge as possible to arrive at your answer.
The point isn’t about speed when learning. Everyone gets faster as we keep using a skill. So the more practiced one is thinking through the many connections that support an answer, the quicker we become. Self-pacing provides opportunities to develop one’s skills to connect and apply the fundamentals rather than memorizing a quickly forgotten solution.
Self-Guided Learning
Choice is a motivator in most aspects of life, let alone in one’s learning. For example, working at the Museum of Science in Boston, I learned from wonderfully creative colleagues about designing exhibits that engage people regardless of how they interacted with the experiences. This left a lasting impression on me, both in thinking about the typically highly structured formal education process and watching the excitement of people of all ages work their way through the Museum based on their interests and questions.
As a scientist, I loved the challenge of figuring out how to tackle the research challenge of the moment. No one told me how to solve the problem. Instead, I explored my options and incrementally tested the results of experiments to determine the next step. I had to create my path. As adults, we use self-guided learning in our everyday lives and our work – why not practice it as a student?
Many others also advocate the benefits of self-guided learning.
From Michigan State University Extension:
- Promote goal setting and goal achieving,
- Engage socially, emotionally, and intellectually,
- Encourage curiosity and problem-solving, and
- Value learning
From AlternativesToSchool.com:
- Promotes the natural development of self-confidence, initiative, perseverance, and life satisfaction.
- Provides opportunities to pursue a far wider range of interests than is possible compared to a planned course
- Reinforces collaboration within and beyond the family.
From SelfDirectedLearning.com:
- Too numerous to list!
Retake Assessments
The Value of Being Wrong
If you’ve ever tried to repair or build something you’re unfamiliar with, the first, second, and possibly third time you did it, you most likely made a mistake. At some point in the process, you realized something was wrong. So you had to identify where you first went wrong, why it was wrong, and rethink the process from that point forward.
A setback is a priceless moment for growth. Although being wrong caused you to spend more time than planned and possibly increased the budgeted cost to purchase more supplies, you had the chance to regroup your thoughts and enthusiasm and try again with a renewed sense of attention to your process. When you complete the task, you have grown even more than if you succeeded on the first try. When you don’t succeed at first, you know more about what you need to know, so you search better, question more thoroughly, and plan with more detail. Being wrong should be viewed as a valuable learning opportunity, but only if you have time to work through what was wrong and then integrate the corrected understanding with what you know and the skills you already have.
Science Pickle Assessments
Most assessments on Science Pickle have randomly selected questions, so if you didn’t do well, save the problems you tried, your answers, feedback, and grading of each evaluation. Use these to help you study the topic again, then try a new quiz. You have unlimited tries to become proficient at the challenge.
Share Your Assessments
Since you may create a PDF or screenshot of your assessment, share the problems you worked on and your graded answers (preferably the one you earned the highest score on) with your teacher, mentor, or tutor, or keep a copy to help you study for exams given by teachers.
Science is a Creative Process
Initially, the intent was to create a science education website based on the courses I developed, taught, and modified over the years. Hence the name, Science Pickle. But as I reflected on my experiences in the classroom and while tutoring, I realized the following:
- Most students believe that science is not as creative compared to what they experience in other courses. However, having talked with many creative people in art, theater, music, dance, business, writing, journalism, history, teaching, etc., we all have a core set of creative processes. If this website remained focused on science, it would promote the isolation of science methods from the more universal ways of the creative process.
- Students have busy schedules that rarely allow and encourage them to think about their process for what they are doing. To keep students focused on the task at hand, most courses are designed to move at a pace that challenges most students. The downside of this rapid pace is that there is little time for self-reflection about how and what they are doing.
- If it ain’t broke, why fix it? When you get an “A” on an assignment, do you dive deeper into your process? Or do you feel that you have a good set of methods already developed? Even when you succeed in an activity, it is useful to reflect on why your process worked and ponder what would have happened if you had done it differently.
- Since students don’t have the time to think about the process dictated by the course (science, math, etc.), how do they reflect on the fundamental skills that these processes rely upon: learning, questioning, and observing? By improving these fundamental creative processes, everything built upon them improves too.
To provide opportunities to learn about, think about, and engage in our creative processes (learning, observing, and questioning), Science Pickle expanded its activities beyond a science-only focus.
What's New?
January 11, 2023: There was a significant lapse in updates since I returned to full-time teaching and coaching.
A new topic, Math Modeling, is being added since it is a course I teach.
September 28, 2021: Although there haven’t been any new additions to the site, there are a number of projects in the works, including an app and supporting web pages on the rock cycle, and expanded activities and web pages on how to use a sundial to understand the hourly, daily, and seasonal positions of the sun in the sky. These should be available by December.
July 1, 2021: Revised the Pixel Resolution web app on the Vision Spatial Resolution web page so it displays properly on screens with a limited height (often PC laptops).
June 25, 2021: Revised the Pixel Resolution web app on the Vision Spatial Resolution web page of the Observing section. Explore how a range of images appear using fewer and greater pixels or try one of the three games. Complete 5 rounds of a game to see how well you can identify the number and shape of objects in the image using as few pixels as possible. You may now identify the number and shape separately when you feel there are adequate clues in the displayed resolution. Compare your results to those who have completed the app already.
June 22, 2021: Revised the Color Difference web app on the Color Vision web page of the Observing section. The app is streamlined to take you through identifying the shape that appears as its color changes from the background color in a series of randomly generated challenges. Complete 15 in a row to measure your sensitivity to differences in color and compare your results to those who have completed the app already. There are two versions depending on the screen size: tablets and larger or smartphones.
June 19, 2021: Revised the Color Change web app on the Color Vision web page of the Observing section. The app is streamlined to take you through identifying which color is changing in a series of randomly generated challenges. Complete 10 in a row to measure your sensitivity to changing color and compare your results to those who have completed the app already. There are two versions depending on the screen size: tablets and larger or smartphones.
June 18, 2021: Added a quiz mode to the Drawing Declination Circle web app, which coaches you through the four basic steps to drawing a declination circle for any latitude and day of the year. There is a practice mode with considerable guidance and feedback and a quiz mode with minimal guidance but considerable feedback when the quiz is completed.
June 6, 2021: Use the web app View Declination Circles in Changing Views of Declination Circles to explore three common views of declination circles to identify their strengths, limitations, and applications. Then learn how to go from one view to another.
May 25, 2021: The Drawing Declination Circle web app coaches you through the four basic steps to drawing a declination circle for any latitude and day of the year. There are written and visual hints, tips, and feedback for each step, and you may set the date and latitude yourself or use the random option to challenge yourself.
May 11, 2021: The sun angle and direction to the local horizon define the Sun’s position in the local sky. Use the new web page, Solar Time, Angle, and Direction, and the web app, Sun Angle and Direction, to explore how to use declination circles to calculate the Sun’s position at any solar time anywhere in the world on any day of the year. Connect latitude, day of the year, solar time, and sun angle and position, so if you know four of the variables, you may calculate the fifth!
See Past What’s New
