Science has enabled humans to learn a great deal about the past history of the Earth, the Solar System, and the Universe. These scientific investigations are not based on experiments. Instead, like detective work, they rely on logical reconstructions based on fragmentary evidence. But, similar to experimental science, each tentative conclusion then suggests how to focus a search for additional clues.
Click here for the “Checks lab,” a class activity created by Steve Randak and modified by Judy Loundagin, in which students attempt to decipher the past from fragmentary evidence. They construct plausible scenarios to explain a series of canceled bank checks and revise their original hypotheses with new evidence.
Click on the image below for “The Great Fossil Find,” a class activity in which students are taken on an imaginary fossil hunt. Following a script read by the teacher, students “find” (remove from envelope) paper “fossils” of some unknown creature, only a few at a time. Each time, they try to reconstruct the creature, and each time their interpretation may change as new pieces are “found.”
