Notes on the Mystery Box Exercise

Recall that science is a process for answering questions about nature and which helps us find the most reasonable explanations for natural phenomena.  The Mystery Boxes exercise is designed to help us explore some characteristics of that process.

After observing the boxes in groups, we stopped and discussed what we thought we were looking at.  First, everyone agreed that we were looking at some similar boxes although some were blue and some were green.  There is something inside the boxes, but we could not come to a general agreement about what it was.  Some thought it was spherical like a ball, whereas others thought it was more cylindrical (but not perfectly so).  Fortunately, a report from a research lab across the country came in with results of some x-ray analyses indicating that MAYBE the object moving around inside was spherical in shape.  We decided to tentatively accept their results and make an assumption that the object was indeed a sphere (like a ball).

With this assumption in mind, each group returned to the task of determining what the inside of the box looked like.  A succession of ideas was presented within each group and recorded on paper with each idea tested against additional observations.  Thus, each group refined their idea about the inside appearance of the boxes.   Finally, each group was confident enough to share their ideas publicly by drawing them on the board.  Groups then started to compare their ideas and examine each other's boxes.  Similarities of their drawings gave the blue box groups confidence that their ideas were close to correct.  The green box groups found their drawings less similar, although there were at least a couple of common items.  The differences gave them ideas about further lines of investigation to explore.

The exact insides of the Mystery Boxes will never be exactly known as it is impossible to open them and actually see the internal structure.  However, through repeated observation and testing of refined ideas, we should be able to arrive at a working understanding of the internal structure that most people would be able to accept.

The Mystery Box exercise is analogous to the efforts of science to understand nature.  Exactly how nature is structured and functions will never be known, but we develop models of our increasing understanding of how it works.  Initially, those models are poor approximations to the reality that we assume exists.  In the early stages of our modeling effort, we might experience some major shifts in our models, but as we continue to refine our models the changes get smaller as the models get more detailed.  Our models of reality will get better and closer to reality, but reality will never be completely revealed.  This characteristic of science is often referred to as uncertainty.  Early in the process, uncertainty is high, but repeated experimentation and accumulation of conclusions reduces uncertainty until we have a working model from which we make useful predictions and apply our knowledge to solve societal problems

The Mystery Box exercise also reveals the social nature of science.  Recall how collaboration among groups and even external inputs helped us make progress in understanding the nature of the boxes.  You might also have noticed how one group disagreed with another.  Resolution of these differences might have contributed increased understanding of the nature of the boxes.

Our models of the Mystery boxes were like theories in science.  Each part of our model like the nature of the ball, barriers, and inside layout are like hypotheses .  Thus, a theory is a collection of hypotheses that explains some natural phenomenon.

As we discussed in class, there are untested theories, rejected theories, and embedded theories, which represent our accumulated scientific knowledge about nature.