NATURAL AND COMPUTING EXPERIMENT IN LABORATORY WORKSHOP ON PHYSICS

In modern science a natural and computing experiment (NCE) is one of the most typical, productive and promising cognitive methods. It substantiates reasonability of widespread introduction of NCE in educational process of secondary schools and professional training institutions. The paper examines the structure of NCE that is necessary for its adequate representation in the contents of education. Basic structural elements of NCE are an experimentalist, appliances for performance of a natural and computing experiment, a subject of inquiry (sample), empirical and theoretical models of the subject of inquiry. The block diagram of NCE makes it possible to determine the sequence of natural and computing experiment performance in the laboratory works on physics. The paper describes the research carried out in the work with the empirical and theoretical models. In inquiring the empirical model it is necessary to calculate indirectly observable quantity, to evaluate their errors by variation of the results of direct measurements, to draw graphs with use of different functional scales and indication of an error band, to determine the form of approximating functions and values of their parameters with application of regression analysis, and to evaluate the statistical uncertainty of approximating functions coefficients. The theoretical model is used for predicting the values of unknown quantities and the analysis of the character of functional connections between them. The use of the theoretical model makes it possible to solve the following pedagogical tasks: 1) trainees’ acquaintance with the theory of the experiment subject; 2) detection of characteristic properties of studied phenomenon and planning natural experiment in such a way as not to remain unnoticed these special features; 3) the teacher’s control of the trainees’ readiness to carry out a natural experiment. The paper examines the procedures of organization and conducting the workshop providing for both frontal work and sequential work performance. In the unified model of NCE activity fulfillment we separate five stages: 1) planning the research, 2) construction and investigation of the theoretical model; 3) obtaining primary data in a natural experiment, 4) construction and investigation of an empirical model; 5) processing and interpretation of the data obtained with using theoretical and empirical models. Besides, the theoretical model (stage 2) can be built after the natural experiment performance. There are two examples of performance of laboratory works on physics in form of NCE. The paper presents the formulated pedagogical consequences of NCE use in educational process that reveals its high educational and developmental potential: 1) smoothing a gap between theoretical knowledge and genuine reality and practice; 2) more complete realization of “research training concept”; 3) reflection development; 4) skills development of mathematical methods application for processing of measurement results.

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