I was pleased to see the news report of how three teen-aged girls recently won the Siemens Competition in Math, Science and Technology. (click here to see article) Science should not be the exclusive domain of one gender.
As the father of a ten-year-old girl I was especially heartened. Last year she announced how she hated science. But, this year she has changed her mind and now considers science as worthy of her attention.
Mostly, she likes zoology. While driving home from a visit to her grandparents one night recently, she started talking about the insects she saw clustering around the streetlights. Some streetlights hosted swarms of insects while others seemed to have none. As we talked, I gently led her into discussing why that might be. Eventually, we planned a putative science project. My main contribution being the use of a digital camera to photograph the clouds of insects so that we could get a rough count later.
I went to PsycINFO later and found one old article that seemed spot-on:
Porter, L. C. (1941). What kinds of light attract night-flying insects?, General Electric Review, 44, 310-314. I have not secured a copy yet, but will soon.
Some Spring night, she and I will go out and conduct a pilot study, select an independent variable or two, and collect some data, hopefully for the FUN of it.
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