Stimulating Understanding of Computational science through Collaboration, Exploration, Experiment, and Discovery for students with Hearing Impairments
a collaboration of the Shodor Education Foundation, Inc., Eastern North Carolina School for the Deaf, Barton College, the National Technical Institute for the Deaf, and Interpreters, Inc.

For Teachers!

How does your hair know how long to grow?

Goal: The students will learn about hair growth and how the hair cycle regulates the length of different types of hair. They will use computer models to explore the process of hair length regulation. They will gain an appreciation of the value and role of questions in the scientific process.



Prerequisites: The students will need to be skilled in the use of a pocket calculator to multiply and divide. They will need to be skilled in measuring using centimeters and millimeters.

Materials: pocket calculator or access to a calculators on a computer, metric ruler, computer with internet access or saved web pages used in this lesson.

Optional materials: Excel and Stella software. If your school doesn't have a Stella site license you can download a free save disabled version of  Stella from http://www.hps-inc.com/. Computer models downloaded for this lesson.



General discussion: This lesson is designed to help the students view questions like scientists. Scientists ask a lot of questions. They don't ask questions to put people on the spot. Questioning is the way they think. It helps discipline their thoughts so they are careful not to miss things. Questioning also opens up new areas to explore. As you encourage your students to question everything, help them appreciate the honesty and respect that this approach requires. 

This lesson is designed to help the students discover that science is cumulative. We start with a question. We look around to learn what others have discovered about the issue and then make models and experiments to expand our understanding. Our models and experiments answer some of our questions but if we are doing good science they really give us more questions. At the core, science is an exploration. It isn't a set of answers. Reading a science book or journal is like reading a history book. It helps us learn what explorers have learned and how they went about it. Science, on the other hand, is pushing the envelope. With the right attitude and tools we can be scientists and explorers. The nice thing about science is that we don't have to go to uncharted worlds to be explorers. We can explore the hairs on our own heads.

Developed by
The Shodor Education Foundation, Inc.

Copyright © 1999-2001 by The Shodor Education Foundation, Inc.

This project is supported, in part, by the National Science Foundation Opinions expressed are those of the authors and not necessarily those of the National Science Foundation.