I'm hanging out in the Inquiry class -- though trying to keep my mouth shut and just observe. It's soooo hard for me.
Over the weekend, they had to work on a rough draft of their final paper - with questions about what makes something a good primary color and why magenta seems to be a "better mixer" than red. In talking with Irene about plans for how to work with these rough drafts, I thought what might come from the conversation is that some students would use operational/phenomenological ways of describing why something is a primary or a good mixer (it produces all the other colors); others would be more theoretical/mechanistic (relating it to our vision, perhaps). And I think it's nice to have that distinction spelled out and named - it gives you a way of looking at your own and others' work, and understanding the kind of claims they're making.
Instead, of course, the conversation went in a different direction. The first group thinks magenta is a better mixer because it "has more colors" and red is just "more dominant." The second group (P) has a Skittles analogy in which each filter "eats" certain colors out of the Skittles bowl. A yellow filter eats the blue/purples. Magenta eats the yellow/greens. Red eats everything but red. (A student asks "how is this different from the first group?" The first group is able to describe how it's similar - what makes red "dominant" is its ability to absorb all but red.) What matters in making magenta a good mixer is that it is "diverse." (I love that line - it seems really similar to the heterogeneal description that Newton uses.)
A third group (K) disagrees saying, in essence, that adding paint doesn't always make the resulting color *darker* - sometimes it gets lighter. (The speaker here is very careful in his choice of words and so talks about the reflectance - not using language the rest of the class is using and I think it's hard for others to understand what his idea really is and why it's different from the first two.)
Conversation continues for a bit (can't recall it all) - but it's worth pointing out that all groups have one or two guys and so far *only* guys have spoken. In all but one group, it was the guy who wrote on the whiteboard for their group. One girl (C) in the corner has tried to get the floor but hasn't been noticed. She finally says that she thinks white should be a primary because it has all colors. It's interesting to see how much she wants this idea considered.
Pause. Not picked up.
C repeats it again - that white should be primary.
P.G. (from the second group) picks up on her comment and seemingly builds on it (says something like "related to that...") but it's not addressing her idea (instead is about perception as an illusion of color).
Conversation again is more focused on the RGB primaries.
At 29:50 (so that I can find it again) in a conversation about what colors are primaries, C finds a way back in with her idea: "But I said white was [primary]. I wonder if anyone has any thoughts? I wanted to throw that out there again."
Conversation is generous "oh that makes sense - I disagree but I can see why you think that" kinds of comments. And again, discussion of primary colors (and not white).
Finally she adds to the conversation with one last claim about white: "The white paint would act as light. Does that make sense? When you mix red and blue it gets dark, but if you add white in that it would be probably more light." A student agrees - that when you mix paints, you need white to make all the colors. (And points out that whiteboards, paper, etc. are all, duh, white because it is like "light.")
There's a tentativeness to the way in which she speaks that *seems* like it's uncertain and that it's tangential to the conversation (a slight laugh, touching her face, speaking in questions - I saw her trying to speak up several times before she actually did) - it could seem like she's not confident. But the way in which she brings it up three times (and had it on her board) suggests to me that she thinks this idea is valuable and important, worthy of discussion. I'm bothered that it wasn't more noticed. (I had just read this yesterday, too, so feeling sensitive to gender and speaking: http://www.lrb.co.uk/2014/02/14/mary-beard/the-public-voice-of-women)
It was hard to be quiet and so I wasn't -- Irene noticed me anxious to speak and I said "what C's comment makes me think is that white is kind of a "skittle replenisher" -- like, adding more and more paint usually means more and more skittles get eaten, but if you throw in white, it's like adding skittles back." I wanted them to see how her idea connected to all the prior ideas in an interesting way.
What I see in her idea: given the early ideas about "good mixers" being paints with "lots of colors" (in their spectrum), white should be the ultimate "good mixer." If those groups can articulate why white is *not* a good primary - in what way the "diversity" of white is less productive than the diversity of magenta or cyan - this could really push their thinking. It would help us be clear about how what we mean by "primary" color is different from what we mean by "contains lots of colors." Pink also contains lots of colors, but it's not a great primary.
And there's more: Given group 3's claim that paints don't only absorb, they also reflect, she's added to that idea -- white paint is not clear paint, it does kind of act "as light." And the simple rules about pigments simply absorbing isn't quite true - this helps with that idea.
Anyway - I was hoping to tape the conversation for some data to use in our book about writing in science - the kinds of conversations that further a draft and shape a paper. But instead I got very curious about C's persistence - and missed opportunities - and how she frames her ideas.
And after a long blogging hiatus this is just a quick sketch of things I noticed in the classroom today. Not sure where to go with them, either. But worth thinking about. Our classes with lots of guys have a really different dynamic.
