Monday 8 September 2008

Experience and Learning

From Ted.com: Jonathan Drori: Why we don’t understand as much as we think we do

Jonathan asked four questions near the beginning of his talk:
1. A seed weights next to nothing. Where does the stuff of the tree come from?
2. Can you light a little torch bulb with one piece of wire, a battery and a bulb?
3. Why is it hotter in summer than winter?
4. Can you draw the orbits of the planets?

Surprisingly, I was able to answer all questions correctly, honest! How about you?

The take home lesson of this talk is that learning is more than just collecting experience. Intuition, our collection of experience, is often wrong!

Watch the video to find the answers to the questions above. Near the end of the talk, Jonathan throws two more questions to us:
1. How does an aircraft's wing create lift? (ensure you also explain how planes can fly upside down.)
2. Why is the sea blue? (and why is it blue on cloudy days?)

1 comment:

Doug Holton said...

Yeah his examples were borrowed from the Minds of Our Own and A Private Universe videos:
http://www.learner.org/resources/series26.html
http://www.learner.org/resources/series28.html