Thinking+Flexibly

__Thinking Flexibly:__

__My Understanding of this Habit:__ My understanding of this habit is the ability to look "outside the box" and to be able to see the other, creative side of situations and way to approach certain goals. This may include finding a more convenient way to solving a chemistry problem.

__How I Applied this Habit to Chemistry:__ In our experimental lab design, we had to first find a general idea that we could work and experiment with then narrow our topic down to a manageable, more specific target. Also, we had to be ready for potential errors or flaws in our experimental design which may alter the course of our experiment. Our first idea for our Oobleck experiment was to drop a jiao (A small Chinese RMB coin), on top of a piece of oobleck, and using a stopwatch, time to the number of seconds it takes for the jiao to reach the bottom of the beaker. However, we did not look ahead and think about how exactly would we be able to see the jiao since the oobleck apparently does not have a transparent but more of a translucent surface quality. Therefore, while conducting the experiment, the jiao either passed way too quickly to time each trial or was hidden by the Oobleck's color. We then approached this project from a different perspective and tried timing the amount of time it takes for a beaker of oobleck to fill a 20cm diameter circle through pouring. But, as we only had three bags of corn starch, we would not be able to conduct enough trials to make an accurate conclusion for our experiment. Therefore, we sized down the experiment so instead of a huge 20cm diameter circle, we chose a petri dish. Not only did we alter the way we perceived our experiment, we also learned how to manage the materials we were provided wisely as well as being able to finish the experiment in time with the due date. This is a picture of Oobleck, taken from the following link