The forever expanding diaper was another lesson for us, testing our prior knowledge and providing us a chance to make hypotheses and experimenting to explore, explain, and evaluate our thinking. Why do we assume that the diaper can only hold as much as a baby can dispense from it's body?
More and more I've been exploring my inquisitive side. My mind has been open to questions I've never even thought to ask before. After pouring five full cups of water into this diaper, I wondered if it would ever get full. Once I was prompted to tear the outer layer of the diaper apart, I saw that the inside of the diaper wasn't filled with cotton. Instead, it consisted of small, translucent orbs called "polymers"--a word that our professor scaffolded for us. The water didn't leak because the polymers changed and expanded to absorb the water. Later on, a few of my classmates tried putting salt on the polymers. It dehydrated the polymers and released the water! I thought about how I would approach this in a classroom with young students. I thought about the vocabulary we would have to focus on and what other concepts I could relate and build on to add depth to the students' understanding of cause and effect.
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