Category: Self Learning

The session 6 was around pulleys and electrical circuits. The task was to lift the weight with pulleys and rope attached to a motor. There was quite bit of struggle as it was difficult to attach rope to motor shaft. The lesson learned was something easy looking things are the most difficult. Irrespective, we did have fun. The younger group worked with kits to build simple machines (working models) of merry-go-rounds and windmills.

Interaction with Dr. Jose Armendariz!
Sports Medicine Director

Dr. Armendariz spoke with kids in the most interactive way and engaged them in the discussion & education on Sports Injuries In Children. Later on he actually demoed the kids with portable ultrasound. Kids were very happy to see images and handle the various joint models. It was fun learning from a Dr using state of art equipment.

Thank you Dr. Armendariz!

Our 5th session was around Simple Machines. The kids learned Pulleys and Levers by constructing simple pulley systems and levers by balancing weights. They god to do measurements and deduce therefore how the pulleys & levers act. It was a great example of self learning!

A few weeks ago I took my wife to an emergency room as her seemingly simple looking flu became somewhat scary in the wee hours of the morning. She had just come back from an overseas trip. Well, just to be safe than sorry, I took her to the ER. After waiting in the room for a doctor, and answering several questions of the nurse… so they can complete their questionnaire, my wife was already feeling alright. Where as I was feeling helpless & hopeless. Then after about 45-50mins, the doctor appeared and told us it’s a case of viral infection & nothing needs to be done. He said, “We will test her for flu. After that you can go home, take rest & drink plenary of fluids.” Sure, as if we didn’t know any of this, we came home after causing a few hundred dollars worth of dent to our plastic cards.

Wish the story ended here. The very next day she developed high fever and severe cough and in-spite of our son telling her to go back to see a doctor, we both resisted the urge as we knew what new (?) we will learn. Which is go home… take rest… drink etc etc.

The next two days she waited and finally went to our primary care who then prescribed her antibiotics. Almost a week had gone by and I had seen her condition had gotten worse. After the antibiotics, she started getting better and now after 3 weeks she is getting back to normal.

I am no doctor but does it really have to be this way?

Then there was another story! Last year, I had come from an overseas trip and thought I am coming over by flu, went to an urgent care (walk-in clinic) where I was seen by a nurse practitioner. She checked my vitals and prescribed a course of antibiotics right away and had ordered tests. A couple days of rest & I was fine. The tests did come back positive with bacterial infection. So she was right prescribing me the antibiotics on a hunch. Or was it just a hunch?

So…. Was the doctor who saw my wife in ER right or was the nurse practitioner who used the hunch to prescribe antibiotics? Or is my question wrong?

Well, it could be all the above (Including all possible combinations of the words in above sentence); as we can’t really go back and verify the conditions under which those decisions were made.

Recently, I read a book and the author mentioned how the decisions based on hunches are really the decisions based on a long brewed logic of varied experiences one has collected. In the story, a team of firefighters go in to the house on fire and as they enter the house, don’t really see a sign of fire. The chief, on a hunch (?), at once orders everyone out and as they are just get out of the house the floor collapses and is engulfed in to flames. Luckily (?) no one is hurt. Now; we can argue that the chief was lucky & it could have been just a case of fluke or not; but really was that just the hunch?

The author argued that what we consider a decision based on the gut feel, is a solid logic based on years of experience or what I call a “deeper understanding” that one developes without even knowing it.

I have several examples that I can list in support of my argument for deeper understanding. Whether my theory is correct or not; one can’t deny that there is something beyond understanding. Some call it hunch or gut feeling, others may call it an intuition or whatever. For me, I call it “deep understanding”. The understanding of the things you develop by collecting information, gaining experience by using it and teaching your brain “more” without you even know you are developing a “Deep Understanding“….. as I call it.

What do you call it as?

Several years ago as I was a growing kid, I used to build science toys at home. The concepts that I used to learn in school may or may not used to be part of those but that’s what used to excite my friends. Just as an example, I build my first electric motor at the age of 11 using a horse-shoe magnet, an enameled wire and few other parts from trash. It was so exciting when I could get it to turn a few times. But this success didn’t come right away… it was only after several attempts and even though I had a small book of instructions to make the motor. I never follow instructions exactly when I am assembling something. And most of the time I end up spending more time to get it right than getting it right the first time. But I have realized that this way I could develop a deeper understanding of the things. Because when something doesn’t work, you try another thing and you try again and again until you get it working. This self-teaching or learning albeit takes time. But one could consider it as a complementary education to what we learn in schools. As a matter of fact, it should be a “MUST” in my opinion.

An then later after several years as I was teaching my son and at times getting frustrated that why can’t he listen to me on how to do things, I realized my own mistake. I was not letting him learn by trial and error or not letting him fail at what he was doing. Once I corrected my mistake, he just started having fun at it. And like me, he started developing deeper understanding about the things.

Then I came across Suagata Mitra’s TED talk and his experiments with Computer in Hole. This fortified my believes and since then I have been a big fan of “let them fail, let them play” with science. No force, no competition, no end game other than let’s make something.

I have been a happy father of a happy son since then 🙂

Picture Credit: Sugata Mitra’s Computer in Wall! picture from web!