6 Humans Step Into One-Year Isolation Dome

Mars Isolation Experiment Begins

(NASA)

http://phys.org/news/2015-08-year-mars-isolation.html


1)  What collected data could be the most useful for NASA?  In what ways could the experiment prove to be useless?  

2)  Why might a former astronaut think about this differently than a junior high school student?  In what ways might Buzz Aldrin and Chris Hadfield think similarly about this experiment?

3)  In which class would this topic be most appropriate?  In what ways is this experiment more about physical health than psychology?  

4)  What if the participants all spoke different languages?  Were related?  The length of time was shortened to 1 month?  Extended to 3 years?

5)  In what ways is this experiment significant?  What are the long term consequences on the participants?  What are the short term consequences for NASA?  What are the basic assumptions tested in this experiment?

Extension Activities:

1)  Students can research the effects of extreme isolation on humans ("feral" children, solitary confinement, etc.) and write a story from the perspective of someone who is recruited by NASA because of their previous experience.

2)  Students can write a journal in the voice of a future astronaut from different points in time, considering time traveled and their eventual return.  

AoK:  Human Sciences

WoK:  Intuition

What Happens When You Stop Checking Your Phone? (Video)

Creativity Happens When You Stop Checking Your Phone

http://www.theatlantic.com/video/index/385434/creative-ideas-happen-when-you-stop-checking-your-phone/

-The Atlantic

1)  How many times is "too many times" to check your phone in a day?  How do you know?  What other relevant numbers would help us understand this issue?  Is boredom good?  How could you prove boredom and creativity are correlated?

2)  Why might parents feel differently about this than students?  Why might Nigerians feel differently about this than Canadians?  Whose perspective is most relevant in instituting a school-wide policy on mobile phone use?

3)  How is this connected to science?  How is this connected to math?  In what ways is this issue similar to the rise in popularity of printed materials?  How is it different?  Are doodling and checking Instagram related?

4)  What would happen if your school instituted a policy of "no mobile phones" in your school?  What if parents were held legally responsible for their  child's boredom levels?  What would happen if a "pro-boredom" campaign was instituted at your school?

5)  In what ways is this relevant in your life?  Do you think about your own phone use?  Do others comment on your phone use?

Extension Activities:

1)  Students monitor, chart and present their mobile phone use.  They develop plans for increasing or decreasing their current use as they see fit.

2)  Students write "alarmist" articles about older technologies where where they warn users of the potential effects of over-use (i.e. microwave, automobile, internet)

Optical Illusions and Emotion Recognition in Faces

An Illusion That Makes Me Both Happy and Sad

-Phil Plaitt

http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2014/10/22/illusion_margaret_thatcher_illusion.html

1)  How can our brains be tricked?  How do you know how prevalent the effect is?  What are the limits of psychological studies?  Are there more valid experiments than others? Is there more compelling evidence to prove the existence of this phenomenon?  

2)  Are children better than adults at recognizing objects/faces in a cloud?  In what ways can your culture influence your perception of emotions?  Who might perceive emotion differently?  A zookeeper?  Genghis Khan? Shakespeare?  

3)  In which academic subject might this topic be most appropriate?  Which of the ways that pareidolia manifests that the article outlines are the most common?  Least?  How does this happen in the visual arts?  In astronomy?  Which forms of pareidola are most dangerous?  

4)  What if advertisers were banned from using their knowledge of pareidola?  What if the original researcher used a picture of someone else for the experiment?

5)  What is significance of understanding this optical illusion?  What are the larger implications in school?  Environmentalism?  To whom might this matter most?      

Extension Activities:
1)  Students can show this illusion to family members and record their reactions.  Compare results and chart them with others in class.
2)  Students can create advertisements using the Thatcher Effect for their favorite products.
3)  Students can identify uses of this optical illusion and facial recognition in popular culture and predict how the story might have been different if they recognized their biases.