Refining and Retesting
NASA technology development involves collecting data on success or failure, and improving it with each iteration.
We decided to apply this process as we refined a procedure. The basic concept is test, refine, and retest.
What Did We Test? Cookies!
Our children love to open cookies and remove all of the filling. Only then do they consume the chocolate exterior. Last night, as we ate our favorite double-stuffed sandwich cookies, we tried to find as many different ways to seperate them as possible. We defined our two favorite methods as simply as possible:
1) Twist
2) Pull
And then we made a hypothesis about which would probably be more successful. Next we needed to test our hypothesis!
Here is a photo of our youngest eating a cookie. This is an old picture, but I love it. Even with her first sandwich cookie, this child scraped out the filling before eating the chocolate.
Success Criteria
How Do You Define Success?
I asked my children this question and the answer was striking. Such a narrow window.
How Do You Define Failure?
I was impressed with their complete descriptions of variants that would be considered failure.
We defined our success criteria, and further refined it by discussing what would constitute failure. We discussed how we would collect this data. We decided to take our qualitative assessment and instead quantify the data by breaking it down to two options: success and failure.
Here is an image of an 8 year old's definition of success and failure. It reads:
Success: "A way to succeed is to have a little [filling] on one side and a lot on the other".
Failure: "A failure is when the [cookie] breaks and the frosting is [everywhere]"
Data Collection
Then we collected preliminary data. Our 8 year old wrote the results during data collection. She made a table labeled with the words "Twist" and "Pull". She noted success and failure within each method we attempted. She used a check mark for success and an x for failure. There is one check and three x for Twist, and 4 x for Pull.
Informed Hypothesis
When we looked at that data, we spoke about what we might do if we brought a new package of cookies to a lot of friends - to get a larger sample size. We applied our preliminary data to form an informed hypothesis. The image reads: "Hypothesis: I am perfectly sure that twist will still succeed even if pull has more than zero check marks."
I had to stop myself from correcting and interfering throughout, I needed to stand back and facilitate at their level rather than engage. I often reminded myself that these are just children learning about how to gather data to inform a hypothesis, and I kept it fun.
Up next: More testing with more people!
Time to buy a new package and share this activity with friends. Would you like to try it yourself? Which method did you find more successful, twist or pull? Is it different depending on the kind of sandwich cookie you chose to test?
Here's a picture of a sandwich cookie shaped like a maple leaf, floating on the International Space Station.
You can apply this test, refine, restest process to literally anything you want to understand. It's a simple approach to a scientific method. Have fun!
Going Deeper
This explanation is admittedly simplified, and once you get involved with refining things like methods, processes, or technology, you will find that there's a lot more to it. So I also made another diagram. This diagram reflects the cyclical nature of refining technology. It is a creative cycle. Hypothesize, design, gather data, analyze data, and back to hypothesis.
Metadata
What background information do people need to know to better understand the data that you have collected? This is Metadata.
NASA Educator Guide
I came across a really fun lesson from 2007 that looks at the design process for building plant hardware.
It introduces concepts of bioregenerative life support. Plants use Carbon Dioxide and produce Oxygen, which humans need to breathe.
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