Monday, April 01, 2019

It's a great day to be skeptical!

I've been developing "skepticism in the classroom" resources for quite a while. I've posted a bunch of them to The Lessons off Phyz at Teachers Pay Teachers. I drop them into my curriculum throughput the year, when the moment is right. Sometimes they are assigned as "YouTube Homework".

YouTube Skepticism: Baloney Detection Kit
This activity engages students as they watch a 14-minute video on a so-called "Baloney Detection Kit". It's a structured implementation of Carl Sagan's quote, "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and acts as a filter when students are confronted with claims.

YouTube Skepticism: The First Moon Office
This activity compares the science of meteors and apparent weightlessness with how those phenomena are represented in a Federal Express television advertisement.

YouTube Skepticism: Power Balance
Power Balance bracelets burst onto the scene a few years ago and enjoyed explosive success. There were "knock-offs," fakes, and the company gathered so much cash it bough the naming rights to sports and entertainment complex in Sacramento: what had been ARCO Arena became Power Balance Pavilion. The activity brings students through the claims and the tests of those claims. Power Balance has since declared bankruptcy, but similar products (targeted toward baseball players) persist. There will always be such products, I hope my students do not buy them.

YouTube Skepticism: Magnet Boys
This activity allows students to consider several cases of so-called "magnet boys" that swarmed the Internet a few years ago. The cases pose interesting questions, and magician and skeptic, James Randi, has an idea of what might be going on.

YouTube Skepticism: Cell Phone Popcorn
This activity has students observe and investigate a set of viral videos that took YouTube by storm a few years ago: ordinary people were using their cell phones to pop popcorn. The videos leas students into a revealing investigation.

The Secrets of the Psychics
Nova's Secrets of the Psychics. Magician and skeptic, James "The Amazing" Randi, exposes so-called psychics at home and abroad. It's a serious topic, but there are a great many laughs to be had.

Merchants of Doubt
Question set and answer key to accompany Merchants of Doubt (Sony Classic Pictures). This documentary exposes the parallels of the tactics used by the tobacco industry and climate change deniers, among others.

Skepticism Bundle—The Whole Shebang!
All of the above.

More skepticism in the classroom resources can be found at

Skepticism in the Classroom (Dean Baird)

Skepticism in the Classroom (my buddy, Matt Lowry—physics instructor and skeptic extraordinaire)

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Great article, totally what I needed.