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Use of Thermochrons in the Classroom

Journal of College Science Teaching—September/October 2010

Preservice elementary education students often do not have a good feel for the process of science. Many may be acquainted with the steps of the scientific method but have never been through the scientific process. An exercise was designed using temperature-logging iButtons (Thermochrons) to improve knowledge of and familiarity with the process of science, critical-thinking skills, and graph-interpretation skills. Students designed temperature-based experiments, made hypotheses, conducted their experiments, generated graphs using Microsoft Excel, conducted thorough data/graph analyses, evaluated the results of their hypotheses, provided written reports, and presented their results to the class. This article summarizes the results of this exercise over a two-year period.
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