I'm going to try and explain why it is that perhaps we don't understand as much as we think we do. I'd like to begin with four questions. This is not some sort of cultural thing for the time of year. That's an in-joke, by the way. But these four questions, actually, are ones that people who even know quite a lot about science find quite hard. And they're questions that I've asked of science television producers, of audiences of science educators -- so that's science teachers -- and also of seven-year-olds, and I find that the seven-year-olds do marginally better than the other audiences, which is somewhat surprising.
Pokušaću da vam objasnim zašto mi u stvari možda baš i ne razumemo onoliko koliko mislimo da znamo. Počeo bih sa četiri pitanja. Nije u pitanju neka kulturološka stvar za ovaj period godine. To je interna šala, uzgred budi rečeno. Čak i ljudi koji znaju dosta o nauci ne mogu lako da odgovore na ova četiri pitanja. Ta pitanja sam postavio urednicima naučnih programa na televiziji, potom nastavnicima nauke, učiteljima nauke- a takođe i sedmogodišnjacima, i zaključio sam da sedmogišnjaci daju malo bolje odgovore u odnosu na drugu publiku, što je iznenađujuće.
So the first question, and you might want to write this down, either on a bit of paper, physically, or a virtual piece of paper in your head. And, for viewers at home, you can try this as well. A little seed weighs next to nothing and a tree weighs a lot, right? I think we agree on that. Where does the tree get the stuff that makes up this chair, right? Where does all this stuff come from? (Knocks)
Prvo pitanje koje možda želite da zapišete ili fizički, na parčetu papira, ili na zamišljenom parčetu papira u vašoj glavi. Oni koji prenos gledaju kod kuće, i vi to pokušajte. Malo seme teži skoro pa ništa, a drvo je veoma teško, zar ne? Mislim da se slažemo oko toga. Gde drvo dođe do materijala od kojeg je napravljena ova stolica? Odakle sve ovo dolazi? (kuca)
And your next question is, can you light a little torch-bulb with a battery, a bulb and one piece of wire? And would you be able to, kind of, draw a -- you don't have to draw the diagram, but would you be able to draw the diagram, if you had to do it? Or would you just say, that's actually not possible?
Sledeće pitanje za vas: da li možete da upalite malu sobnu sijalicu uz pomoć baterije, sijalice i parčeta žice? I da li biste mogli da nacrtate tu šemu, ne stvarno, nego, da li biste znali da nacrtate dijagram ukoliko biste morali? Ili biste samo rekli, da je to ustvari nemoguće?
The third question is, why is it hotter in summer than in winter? I think we can probably agree that it is hotter in summer than in winter, but why? And finally, would you be able to -- and you can sort of scribble it, if you like -- scribble a plan diagram of the solar system, showing the shape of the planets' orbits? Would you be able to do that? And if you can, just scribble a pattern.
Treće pitanje, zašto je toplije leti nego zimi? Mislim da se slažemo da su leta toplija od zima, ali zašto? Na kraju, da li biste bili u stanju i mogli biste da nažvrljate to, ukoliko želite-- da nažvrljate dijagram solarnog sistema, i da pokažete oblik orbita planeta? Da li biste mogli to da uradite? Ukoliko možete, samo nažvrljajte tu šemu.
OK. Now, children get their ideas not from teachers, as teachers often think, but actually from common sense, from experience of the world around them, from all the things that go on between them and their peers, and their carers, and their parents, and all of that. Experience. And one of the great experts in this field, of course, was, bless him, Cardinal Wolsey. Be very careful what you get into people's heads because it's virtually impossible to shift it afterwards, right? (Laughter) I'm not quite sure how he died, actually. Was he beheaded in the end, or hung? (Laughter) Now, those questions, which, of course, you've got right, and you haven't been conferring, and so on. And I -- you know, normally, I would pick people out and humiliate, but maybe not in this instance.
Okej. Deca dolaze do svojih ideja ne od nastavnika, kao što nastavnici vole da misle, već se koriste zdravim razumom, uče iz doživljavanja sveta oko sebe i svega što se dešava između njih i njihovih drugara, njihovih pazitelja, roditelja, i svih ostalih. Iz iskustva. I, naravno, jedan od najvećih stručnjaka u ovoj oblasti bio je, blagosloven bio, Kardinal Volsij. Budite veoma oprezni oko toga šta plasirate u glave ljudi, jer je bukvalno nemoguće promeniti te misli posle, u redu? (smeh) U stvari, nisam baš siguran kako je umro. Da li mu je odrubljena glava na kraju, ili je obešen? (smeh) Vratimo se ovim pitanjima na koje ste naravno tačno odgovorili, i niste se konsultovali, i tako dalje. Znate, ja bih inače prozivao ljude i ponižavao ih, ali to možda nije prikladno sada.
A little seed weighs a lot and, basically, all this stuff, 99 percent of this stuff, came out of the air. Now, I guarantee that about 85 percent of you, or maybe it's fewer at TED, will have said it comes out of the ground. And some people, probably two of you, will come up and argue with me afterwards, and say that actually, it comes out of the ground. Now, if that was true, we'd have trucks going round the country, filling people's gardens in with soil, it'd be a fantastic business. But, actually, we don't do that. The mass of this comes out of the air. Now, I passed all my biology exams in Britain. I passed them really well, but I still came out of school thinking that that stuff came out of the ground.
Malo seme je zaista teško u suštini i sve ovo, 99% ove materije dolazi iz vazduha. Ja mogu da garantujem da je 85% prisutnih, ili možda manje ovde na TED-u, pomislilo da ta materija dolazi iz zemlje. Neki ljudi verovatno dvoje iz publike bi posle došlo ovde i rapravljalo se sa mnom, i tvrdili bi da u stvari ta materija dolazi iz zemlje. Kada bi to bilo tačno tada bi kamioni širom države dopunjavali zemljištem bašte ljudi, to bi bio odličan posao. Ali, to se zapravo ne dešava. Materija dolazi iz vazduha. Ja sam položio sve svoje ispite iz biologije u Britaniji. Dobio sam dobre ocene na tim testovima, ali i dalje sam po završenoj školi mislio da ova materija dolazi iz zemljišta.
Second one: can you light a little torch-bulb with a battery bulb and one piece of wire? Yes, you can, and I'll show you in a second how to do that. Now, I have some rather bad news, which is that I had a piece of video that I was about to show you, which unfortunately -- the sound doesn't work in this room, so I'm going to describe to you, in true "Monty Python" fashion, what happens in the video. And in the video, a group of researchers go to MIT on graduation day. We chose MIT because, obviously, that's a very long way away from here, and you wouldn't mind too much, but it sort of works the same way in Britain and in the West Coast of the USA. And we asked them these questions, and we asked those questions of science graduates, and they couldn't answer them. And so, there's a whole lot of people saying, "I'd be very surprised if you told me that this came out of the air. That's very surprising to me." And those are science graduates. And we intercut it with, "We are the premier science university in the world," because of British-like hubris. (Laughter) And when we gave graduate engineers that question, they said it couldn't be done. And when we gave them a battery, and a piece of wire, and a bulb, and said, "Can you do it?" They couldn't do it. Right? And that's no different from Imperial College in London, by the way, it's not some sort of anti-American thing going on.
Drugo pitanje: da li možete da upalite malu svetiljku uz pomoć baterije, sijalice i parčeta žice? Da, možete, i za koji sekund ću vam pokazati i kako. Imam poprilično loše vesti za vas. Doneo sam jedan snimak koji sam želeo da vam pokažem, ali zvuk nažalost ne radi u ovoj sobi tako da ću vam opisati na montipajtonovski način šta se na tom snimku dešava. Grupa istraživača na snimku odlazi na MIT na dan završne ceremonije. Izabrali smo MIT jer je očigledno veoma udaljen odavde i ne bi vam to previše smetalo ali to funkcioniše na sličan način i u Britaniji i na zapadnoj obali Amerike. Postavili smo im ova pitanja, diplomcima iz nauke, i nisu znali da na njih odgovore. Bilo je puno ljudi koji su govorili: "Zaista bih se iznenadio kada bi mi rekao da je ovo nastalo od vazduha. To me veoma iznenađuje." To su ljudi koji studiraju nauku. Onda ih mi presečemo: "Mi smo najbolji univerzitet nauke na svetu", jer je to tipično za britansku nabeđenost. (smeh) Kada smo inženjerima diplomcima postavili to pitanja rekli su da se to ne može izvesti. Kada smo im dali bateriju, i parče žice i sijalicu, i rekli: "Da li možete to da uradite?" Nisu mogli. U redu? Slično je i na "Imperial College"-u u Londonu, uzgred budi rečeno, nije ovo neka kampanja protiv Amerike.
As if. Now, the reason this matters is we pay lots and lots of money for teaching people -- we might as well get it right. And there are also some societal reasons why we might want people to understand what it is that's happening in photosynthesis. For example, one half of the carbon equation is how much we emit, and the other half of the carbon equation, as I'm very conscious as a trustee of Kew, is how much things soak up, and they soak up carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. That's what plants actually do for a living. And, for any Finnish people in the audience, this is a Finnish pun: we are, both literally and metaphorically, skating on thin ice if we don't understand that kind of thing. Now, here's how you do the battery and the bulb. It's so easy, isn't it? Of course, you all knew that. But if you haven't played with a battery and a bulb, if you've only seen a circuit diagram, you might not be able to do that, and that's one of the problems.
Nije nego. Ovo je važno zato što jako mnogo novca ulažemo u obrazovanje - onda bismo i mogli to da uradimo kako treba. Postoje i društveni razlozi usled kojih bi trebalo da želimo da ljudi zaista shvate šta se dešava u procesu fotosinteze. Na primer, prvi deo jednačine kruženja ugljenika jeste koliko gasa izbacimo u atmosferu, a njen drugi deo, jer sam veoma savestan kao član Kju odbora (kraljevske botaničke bašte) je koliko se ugljen dioksida apsorbuje, preuzme iz atmosfere. To je ono čime se biljke u principu bave. Za Fince u publici, ovo je finska krilatica: i bukvalno i metaforično mi klizamo po tankom ledu ukoliko ne razumemo ove stvari. Ovako ćete rešiti problem baterije i sijalice. Tako je lako, zar ne? Naravno, svi ste to znali. Ali ukoliko se niste igrali sa baterijom i sijalicom, ukoliko ste samo videli strujne šablone, onda možda niste u stanju to da uradite, i to je jedan od problema.
So, why is it hotter in summer than in winter? We learn, as children, that you get closer to something that's hot, and it burns you. It's a very powerful bit of learning, and it happens pretty early on. By extension, we think to ourselves, "Why it's hotter in summer than in winter must be because we're closer to the Sun." I promise you that most of you will have got that. Oh, you're all shaking your heads, but only a few of you are shaking your heads very firmly. Other ones are kind of going like this. All right. It's hotter in summer than in winter because the rays from the Sun are spread out more, right, because of the tilt of the Earth. And if you think the tilt is tilting us closer, no, it isn't. The Sun is 93 million miles away, and we're tilting like this, right? It makes no odds. In fact, in the Northern Hemisphere, we're further from the Sun in summer, as it happens, but it makes no odds, the difference.
Zašto je toplije leti nego zimi? Mi još kao deca naučimo da se ispečemo ako se približimo nečemu što je vruće. To je veoma moćan način učenja, i dešava prilično rano u životu. Po toj logici mi rezonujemo ovako: "Sigurno je toplije leti nego zimi jer smo bliži Suncu." Siguran sam da je većina to pomislila. Oho, odrično mašete glavom, ali samo vas nekoliko zaista odlučno maše glavom. Ostali to rade nekako ovako. U redu. Toplije je leti nego zimi jer su sunčevi zraci više rasprostranjeni, zar ne, usled nagiba Zemlje. Ukoliko mislite da nas nagib približiva, ne, ne čini to. Sunce je udaljeno 150 miliona km, a naš nagib se pomera ovako, zar ne? To nema smisla. Ustvari smo mi na severnoj hemisferi udaljeniji od Sunca tokom leta, igrom slučaja, ali to ne pravi razliku.
OK, now, the scribble of the diagram of the solar system. If you believe, as most of you probably do, that it's hotter in summer than in winter because we're closer to the Sun, you must have drawn an ellipse. Right? That would explain it, right? Except, in your -- you're nodding -- now, in your ellipse, have you thought, "Well, what happens during the night?" Between Australia and here, right, they've got summer and we've got winter, and what -- does the Earth kind of rush towards the Sun at night, and then rush back again? I mean, it's a very strange thing going on, and we hold these two models in our head, of what's right and what isn't right, and we do that, as human beings, in all sorts of fields.
Okej, a sada, vaš nažvrljani dijagram solarnog sistema. Ukoliko mislite, a većina vas sigurno to misli, da je toplije leti nego zimi zato što smo bliži Suncu, sigurno ste nacrtali elipsu. Zar ne? To bi objasnilo sve, zar ne? Sem ako, u vašoj - a vi potvrdno klimate glavom, u vašoj elipsi da li ste pomislili: "Pa, šta se dešava u toku noći?" Razmislite o Australiji i ovom mestu, tamo je leto, a ovde je zima, i šta onda - da li Zemlja malo požuri ka Suncu u toku noći, a onda se brzo vrati ponovo? Mislim da se tu dešava veoma čudna stvar a mi imamo ta dva modela u našoj glavi, šta je ispravno i šta nije, mi to radimo, svi ljudi, u svim mogućim poljima.
So, here's Copernicus' view of what the solar system looked like as a plan. That's pretty much what you should have on your piece of paper. Right? And this is NASA's view. They're stunningly similar. I hope you notice the coincidence here. What would you do if you knew that people had this misconception, right, in their heads, of elliptical orbits caused by our experiences as children? What sort of diagram would you show them of the solar system, to show that it's not really like that? You'd show them something like this, wouldn't you? It's a plan, looking down from above. But, no, look what I found in the textbooks. That's what you show people, right? These are from textbooks, from websites, educational websites -- and almost anything you pick up is like that. And the reason it's like that is because it's dead boring to have a load of concentric circles, whereas that's much more exciting, to look at something at that angle, isn't it? Right? And by doing it at that angle, if you've got that misconception in your head, then that two-dimensional representation of a three-dimensional thing will be ellipses. So you've -- it's crap, isn't it really? As we say. So, these mental models -- we look for evidence that reinforces our models. We do this, of course, with matters of race, and politics, and everything else, and we do it in science as well. So we look, just look -- and scientists do it, constantly -- we look for evidence that reinforces our models, and some folks are just all too able and willing to provide the evidence that reinforces the models.
Ovo je Kopernikov doživljaj solarnog sistema u vidu plana. Ovo je nacrt koji bi trebalo da imate nacrtan na svom parčetu papira. Zar ne? Ovo je pogled NASA-e. Neverovatno su slični. Nadam se da uočavate podudarnost. Šta biste vi uradili kada biste znali da je pogrešna predstava ljudi, znate, u njihovim glavama, o eliptičnim putanjama uslovljena njihovim iskustvima iz detinjstva? Kakvu vrstu dijagrama solarnog sistema biste im vi pokazali kako biste im objasnili da nije zaista tako? Pokazali biste im nešto što izgleda ovako, zar ne? To je šablon, posmatran iz ptičje perspektive. Pogledajte sada šta sam pronašao u udžbenicima. To je ono što pokazujete ljudima, zar ne? Ove slike su preuzete iz knjiga, sa internet prezentacija, obrazovnih veb-sajtova - skoro sve što nađete izgleda ovako. Razlog što je to tako je taj što je jako dosadno prikazati gomilu koncentričnih krugova, dok je mnogo zanimljivije da se nešto posmatra iz tog ugla, zar ne? U redu? Predstavljajući to iz tog ugla, ukoliko ste usvojili taj pogrešan princip u svojoj glavi, tada će dvodimenzionalni prikaz trodimenzionalnih stvari izgledati kao elipse. Tako da vi-- to je glupost, zar ne? Kao što kažemo. Ove mentalne slike-- mi tražimo dokaze koji podržavaju naše predstave. Istu stvar činimo sa rasama, politikom, i svim ostalim, to činimo u nauci takođe. Tako da mi tražimo, samo tražimo-- i naučnici to stalno rade - tražimo dokaze koji podržavaju naše modele, i neki ljudi su zaista veoma sposobni i raspoloženi da pruže dokaze koji potvrđuju naše modele.
So, being I'm in the United States, I'll have a dig at the Europeans. These are examples of what I would say is bad practice in science teaching centers. These pictures are from La Villette in France and the welcome wing of the Science Museum in London. And, if you look at the, kind of the way these things are constructed, there's a lot of mediation by glass, and it's very blue, and kind of professional -- in that way that, you know, Woody Allen comes up from under the sheets in that scene in "Annie Hall," and said, "God, that's so professional." And that you don't -- there's no passion in it, and it's not hands on, right, and, you know, pun intended. Whereas good interpretation -- I'll use an example from nearby -- is San Francisco Exploratorium, where all the things that -- the demonstrations, and so on, are made out of everyday objects that children can understand, it's very hands-on, and they can engage with, and experiment with. And I know that if the graduates at MIT and in the Imperial College in London had had the battery and the wire and the bit of stuff, and you know, been able to do it, they would have learned how it actually works, rather than thinking that they follow circuit diagrams and can't do it. So good interpretation is more about things that are bodged and stuffed and of my world, right? And things that -- where there isn't an extra barrier of a piece of glass or machined titanium, and it all looks fantastic, OK? And the Exploratorium does that really, really well. And it's amateur, but amateur in the best sense, in other words, the root of the word being of love and passion.
Obzirom da sam u Sjedinjenim Državama, sada ću provocirati Evropljane. Ovo ja smatram lošim primerom u centrima za popularizaciju nauke. Ovo su slike iz "La Villette"-a u Francuskoj i iz prijemnog krila Muzeja nauke u Londonu. Ukoliko analizirate način na koje su ove zgrade napravljene, tu ima puno staklenih pregrada, sve je plavo, i deluje profesionalno znate, kako kada se Vudi Alen iznenada pojavio u sceni filma "Annie Hall" i rekao: "Bože, to je tako profesionalno." I vi nemate- tu nema strasti, nema praktičnog treninga, zar ne, i šalu sam namerno dodao, znate. S druge strane, dobra postavka, navešću primer iz naše okoline-- Istraživački centar San Franciska, gde su baš sve stvari-- demonstracije, i tako dalje, napravljene od svakodnevnih objekata koje deca mogu da shvate, veoma je praktično, i mogu se zanimati i eksperimentisati sa tim. Da su apsolventi sa MIT-a i sa "Imperial College"-a u Londonu imali priliku da se igraju sa beterijom i žicom i drugim stvarima, i znate, da to isprobaju, naučili bi zaista kako to funkcioniše, i ne bi mislili da treba da prate strujne mreže i da ne mogu to da urade. Dobro predstavljanje bi imalo više izmešanih i natrpanih stvari iz svakodnevnog života, zar ne? To su stvari gde nema dodatnih prepreka kao što su parče stakla ili obrađenog titanijuma, i gde sve izgleda fantastično, okej? Istraživački centar čini to veoma, veoma dobro. Amaterski je, ali amaterski u najboljem smislu reči, drugim rečima, u korenu te reči su ljubav i strast.
So, children are not empty vessels, OK? So, as "Monty Python" would have it, this is a bit Lord Privy Seal to say so, but this is -- children are not empty vessels. They come with their own ideas and their own theories, and unless you work with those, then you won't be able to shift them, right? And I probably haven't shifted your ideas of how the world and universe operates, either. But this applies, equally, to matters of trying to sell new technology. For example, we are, in Britain, we're trying to do a digital switchover of the whole population into digital technology [for television]. And it's one of the difficult things is that when people have preconceptions of how it all works, it's quite difficult to shift those. So we're not empty vessels; the mental models that we have as children persist into adulthood. Poor teaching actually does more harm than good. In this country and in Britain, magnetism is understood better by children before they've been to school than afterwards, OK? Same for gravity, two concepts, so it's -- which is quite humbling, as a, you know, if you're a teacher, and you look before and after, that's quite worrying. They do worse in tests afterwards, after the teaching. And we collude. We design tests, or at least in Britain, so that people pass them. Right? And governments do very well. They pat themselves on the back. OK? We collude, and actually if you -- if someone had designed a test for me when I was doing my biology exams, to really understand, to see whether I'd understood more than just kind of putting starch and iodine together and seeing it go blue, and really understood that plants took their mass out of the air, then I might have done better at science. So the most important thing is to get people to articulate their models.
Deca nisu prazne table, OK? Pa, u montipajtonovskom stilu, ovo je malo isprazno rečeno, ali to je to - deca nisu prazne table. Oni imaju svoje ideje i svoje teorije, i ako se njima ne bavite, nećete biti u stanju da ih promenite, zar ne? Verovatno ni ja nisam promenio vaše ideje o tome kako svet i univerzum funkionišu. Ovo se jednako može primeniti i na fenomen pokušaja plasiranja novih tehnologija. Na primer, mi u Britaniji pokušavamo da prebacimo celu populaciju na digitalne tehnolgoije (u televiziji). Jedna od teških stvari u tome je ta da kada ljudi imaju poimanje o tome kako sve funkcioniše, to je veoma teško promeniti. Mi nismo prazne table, idejni modeli koje imamo kao deca su sa nama i kada odrastemo. Loša nastava čini mnogo više štete nego koristi. I u ovoj zemlji i u Britaniji deca bolje razumeju magnetizam pre školovanja nego posle završene škole, okej? Ista stvar važi za gravitaciju, to su dva koncepta - i to je jako loše. I znate, ukoliko ste nastavnik i pogledate rezultate pre i posle to je zabrinjavajuće. Rezultati testova su lošiji nakon nastave. Mi vršimo zavere. Sastavljamo takve testove, barem u Britaniji, kako bi ih ljudi položili. U redu? Vlade rade veoma dobro. Zadovoljno se potapšu po ramenu. Okej? Mi smo u zaveri, i u principu da ste - da je neko osmislio test za mene kada sam izlazio na ispite iz biologije kako bi zaista razumeo, video da li sam zaista shvatio više od toga da ako pomešaš skrob i jod dobiješ nešto plave boje, i da sam zaista razumeo da biljke dolaze do materije iz vazduha, možda bih bio bolji naučnik. Najvažnija stvar jeste omogućiti ljudima da jasno predstave svoje modele.
Your homework is -- you know, how does an aircraft's wing create lift? An obvious question, and you'll have an answer now in your heads. And the second question to that then is, ensure you've explained how it is that planes can fly upside down. Ah ha, right. Second question is, why is the sea blue? All right? And you've all got an idea in your head of the answer. So, why is it blue on cloudy days? Ah, see. (Laughter) I've always wanted to say that in this country. (Laughter) Finally, my plea to you is to allow yourselves, and your children, and anyone you know, to kind of fiddle with stuff, because it's by fiddling with things that you, you know, you complement your other learning. It's not a replacement, it's just part of learning that's important. Thank you very much. Now -- oh, oh yeah, go on then, go on. (Applause)
Vaš domaći zadatak - znate li kako se krilo aviona pomera naviše? To je očigledno pitanje, i svi vi imate odgovor u glavi. Drugi deo ovog pitanje je sledeći, morate objasniti i kako avion može da leti u izvrnutom položaju? Aha, tačno. Drugo pitanje je zašto je more plavo? U redu? Svi već imate ideju u glavi o samom odgovoru. Pa, zašto je onda plavo kada je oblačno? Aha, vidite. (smeh) Oduvek sam želeo da to kažem u ovoj državi. (smeh) Na kraju, moja molba svima vama jeste da dozvolite sebi, svojoj deci i svima koje znate da isprobavate stvari, jer putem ispitivanja stvari vi prosto dopunjujete svoja znanja. To nije zamena, to je samo važan deo učenja. Hvala vam puno. I sada-- oh, o-da, hajde,hajde. (aplauz)