Are you happy with Earth's Gravity?

Space is the topic for a conversation class I occasionally have to teach.  Chinese students know little about the topic so it is a hard class in which to get conversation going.  In the three years I have done it, I have tried all sorts of things with little success. 

So I was not excited to see that I was to teach the class yesterday.  What to do?  What to do? I asked myself to the tune of the Foggy Day in London Town song.  Two new questions came to mind which I thought I would try out on the students:  What things do you have to think about when you go to a new planet? and Are you happy with the Earth's gravity?

Armed with these two questions, I did the class.  I had a full group of eight to talk with.  The class had better moments that most times I have talked with them about Space, but there were still too many times when a question I asked was over their heads.  A complicating factor was the fact that the class was half-male, half-female and the men were dominating the conversation.

But when I asked the two questions I got very good responses from all the students.  The students gave many interesting responses to the gravity question.  I asked them if they thought the Earth's gravity** should be more or less than it is.  Some of the females liked the idea of having less weight.  Some students liked the idea of being able to float in lower gravity.  One student even said that people live longer in lower gravity citing an example of 100 year old people living near the North pole (his  assumption being that the force of gravity was lower the furth north you went).  There were also claims that you could be taller in lower gravity.  However, a couple of students put a damper on the enthusiasm for lower gravity by saying that we would have a harder time growing things in low gravity because the soil would float away.  The exchange of views was amazing. 

Now if I can think of eight more questions like those and the Space class will never be a problem again.  The key is to get the students to talk about what they know.

 

**When I first used the word "gravity", the students did not know what it was.  I mentioned the story of Newton discovering it by having an apple fall on his head and the students instantly understood.