On evoking higher order thinking from our students

by Cathy Boucvalt, a teacher at the Curtis School in Physics, Chemistry and Biology.

The concept of bringing math and science together and helping evoke thinking outside of the box, sadly, we don’t have too often in the classroom.

Our students are programmed to memorize, regurgitate, and proceed on with “learning” more.  Have we stopped them from actually dwelling and expanding on ideas without fear of being “stupid”?

Common Core, LEAP, and other current educational parameters are encouraging  educators to “teach to the test” rather than inspiring the young minds of our world.  We judge someone by their ACT, SAT, Standardized Tests, GRE, LSAT, MCAT, etc..

Let us all evoke higher order thinking from our students.

The Big Board – little universe  (BB-lu) uses base units (familiar term in middle school and above) and brings them to “life” in an understandable perspective. The Big Board – little universe,  in a quantifiable way, allows people to look at the most simple beginnings (the Planck base units) and logically expand out from there.

Could there possibly be any other model that actually explains so much in such simple terms?  I suspect not.  About   Home

Notations 83 down to 66 (out of 1-to-202)

Please note: Chart the five Planck base units, Planck Length & Time and Planck Length
The first number, the Notation (out of total of 202), is also the number of times the Planck Length has been doubled.
83:  .156309264 nanometers
or 1.56309264×10-10meters
82:  7.81546348×10-11m
81:  3.90773174×10-11m
80:  1.95386587×10-11m
79:  9.76932936×10-12m
78:  4.88466468×10-12m
77: 2.44233234×10-12 m
76: 1.22116×10-12m
75:  6.10583084×10-13m
74:  3.05291542×10-13m
73:  1.52645771×10-13m
72:  7.63228856×10-14m
71:  3.81614428×10-14m
70:  1.9080×10-14 meters
69:  9.54036072×10-15m
68:  4.77018036×10-15m
67:  2.38509018×10-15m
66:  1.19254509×10-15 m

Return to:
Big Board-little universe
Order in Universe
Universe Table

This image below is from a PPT chart, a presentation of physicist, Prof. Dr. Emily L. Nurse.  She first gave it as a Masterclass in Manchester University back in 2005Dr. Prof. Nurse is affiliated with University College London, Fermilab in Chicago, and CERN Laboratories, Atlas Project, in Geneva.Atoms