Abstract
Raceway has been a popular exhibit at the Children’s Museum in Boston, Massachusetts, for many years. It is a collection of different games in which visitors roll golf balls down the tracks of several different configurations. Roller coaster, Ski jump, the big U are titles of some of these games that also describe the shape of the track. Visitors release a golf ball at the top of these tracks and excitedly watch as the ball rolls up and down the hills and valleys or rolls back and forth before it stops. At several of these games, an interesting type of behavior can sometimes be observed. One structure is a large barrel about 2.5 ft in diameter and 3 ft tall. A track is attached around the perimeter of the barrel forming a spiral. A ball released at the top moves around the spiraling track picking up speed along the way.
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Notes
- 1.
There is actually a fascinating history associated with the term physiognomic (Magli, 1989). Physiognomics a pseudoscience attempted to develop interpretations of the inner person and their soul by studying their facial features. A system was developed that correlated facial features with personality types. The underlying process was an attempt to bring some kind of rationality to the constantly changing features of faces and by extension to the human body. In fact, physiognomics comes from the words phusis (nature) and gnomon (interpretation), which could be interpreted as “recognition, interpretations of nature” (Magli, 1989, p. 87).
- 2.
The fact that there is this long history of this practice and attempts at systemization suggests that it is an innate part of our reaction to the other person or by extension to the physical and natural environment. Werner puts it into a scientific understanding by drawing upon the multitude of more scientific reports and research.
Recall that adults in Michotte’s study of moving dots made spontaneous comments regarding the expressive features of what they were viewing.
- 3.
Barbara Stafford in a wide-ranging review of neurophysiological research and historical developments in the visual arts asserts, “all perception is necessarily associated with a motor function” (Stafford, 2007, p. 201).
- 4.
- 5.
Hans Lutz gives a more formal and standard science account of the occurrences of the vortex pattern in nature but in his introduction also writes about the universality of this pattern. He remarks that the “spiral motif represents the fundamental process of biological creation” (Lutz, 1983, p. 16).
- 6.
It should be noted that most students have little encounter with water in an exploratory manner after kindergarten. It is true that they may mix small quantities in vials or in some small-scale manner, but it is a rare occurrence for them to put their hands in water or move water around such as making waves in a tank. Also, some of the patterns Schwenk portrays are part of the daily weather such as seen on television with satellite images. Because these images occur on such gigantic scales many elementary and middle school students have great difficulty assimilating their significance. Weather could be an interesting topic if dealt with through these kinds of images and patterns, but there needs to be much prior work before I feel students can make sense of them. Investigating weather in elementary and middle school tends to be done in a dry academic manner where students keep track of temperature, relative humidity, and related measurements. The emphasis is on the measurements and not the phenomena that the measurements are representing. Wouldn’t it be more interesting to start off by investigating the local air current around a school building or the movement of air in a classroom? Why not try to get a feeling for very small air currents before taking on the very large scale of weather fronts? And, as given in the scenario do it in a way that brings out strong affective reactions and associations. It would be a more holistic approach.
- 7.
This sounds similar to the concept of structural coupling which is at the heart of Varela, Thompson, and Rosch approach to cognition.
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Zubrowski, B. (2009). Empathy. In: Exploration and Meaning Making in the Learning of Science. Innovations in Science Education and Technology, vol 18. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-2496-1_8
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