How to Cultivate Creativity Through Scientific Thinking? Professor Tsinghua’s Book Reveals the Secrets
Is the earth moving? Did the apple hit Newton? Have you observed the movement of bicycle wheels carefully? Does turning in diving violate scientific principles? Why can’t huge birds fly easily?
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Have you ever thought about these problems in life? Maybe it inspired your thinking at a certain moment, but have you deeply understood the principles behind it? Maybe you have thought deeply. Has your creativity been inspired by your thinking? etc. This leads to the word “scientific thinking”. We have learned a lot of knowledge, but how many people can use knowledge to solve problems in life?
There is such a professor at Tsinghua University. He once led his students to restore samosas, explore Jiri drum carts, lift a refrigerator with a mobile phone, weigh an elephant with a spring scale, etc. Are you curious about the “magic” behind it? “. His creativity is everywhere, always inspiring him to do more interesting scientific creations, and many experiments have also been made into CCTV TV programs. He extracted some wonderful cases from the interesting scientific experiments and scientific games he had done for many years into a book, revealing the process of cultivating creativity for readers.
The birth of a good book
”Professor Tsinghua’s Thinking Training Course: Cultivating Creativity” is a book that cultivates readers’ creativity and helps readers conduct interdisciplinary thinking training. This book was selected into the recommended list of Chinese good books in June 2023.
Creativity cultivation begins with observation and thinking, becomes clear through modeling and analysis, is presented through creative inventions, and is implemented through hands-on practice.
This is a book rich in content, with concise history of scientific development and important models of different disciplines; interesting challenge programs and quick solutions to problems; ubiquitous thinking and Many cases of interdisciplinary integration.
This is a book that can stimulate human creativity. The book revolves around themes such as observation and thinking, modeling and analysis, creativity and invention, hands-on and practice, and combines common interesting problems in daily life with in-depth analysis to help readers cross-border Subject thinking training to better understand the nature of scientific thinking and cultivate innovative thinking and problem-solving abilities.
The author, Gao Yunfeng, Ph.D., is a professor at the School of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Tsinghua University, and currently the director of the Science Popularization Working Committee of the Chinese Mechanics Society. The author has participated in the design of space teaching activities. Once in “Come on! Hundreds of original popular science experiments and games have been planned and designed in TV programs such as To the Future, Fantastic, Fantastic Masters Challenge, Approaching Science, I Love Invention, and So It Is. The author is a scientist and a science popularization expert who has been active in primary and secondary schools and kindergartens for many years.
This book is a scientific thinking book that stimulates readers’ creativity and is summed up by the author based on decades of teaching experience. The content of this book is derived from his teaching research practice and science popularization work practice. It is a method of cultivating creativity that has been tested and proven to be effective. The content of this book is based on the general education courses such as “Interesting Mechanics Experiment and Production” and “Creative Design in Mechanics” set up by the author. acquired scientific knowledge. The cases and practical activities in the book are all originally designed by the author, and some of the contents have been shown in TV programs.
While introducing knowledge content, this book focuses more on thinking training and ability training. Teach them to fish, pay attention to observation and thinking, and cultivate students’ ability to solve problems independently.
To cultivate creativity, this book is enough!
The book revolves around key words such as “thinking”, “analysis”, “creativity” and “practice”. Through interesting scientific cases, it starts from familiar scenes in life, explores the logic behind it, reveals the process that guides thinking, and focuses on thinking and solving. problem method.
The book contains 36 interesting science cases and more than 500 illustrations, integrating content from 15 subjects, making it interesting and inspiring.
The first chapter, “Observation and Thinking,” introduces how to see the essence through phenomena. Starting from the bicycle around us, whether the spokes are blurred caused cognitive conflicts, and then led to the saying that although “seeing is believing”, the phenomena seen by the eyes may only be superficial phenomena of things. In addition to careful observation, we also need to Good thinking.
Chapter 2, “Modeling and Analysis,” explains how to interpret the issues we care about. For example, why bamboo chopsticks are not easy to break but easy to break, through the image analysis of the force on bamboo fiber, it is natural to understand the reason that “unity” is powerful, while “separate fighting” is easy to be broken individually.
Chapter 3, “Creativity and Invention,” introduces some invention cases, including tools and methods. Taking the high jump as an example, different ways of passing the pole will result in different results, which highlights the importance of how to do things. With a certain ability, a good method can get twice the result with half the effort. This conclusion goes beyond learning specific knowledge. Methods are more important than knowledge and are instructive.
Chapter 4, “Hands-on and Practice,” introduces cases that combine theory and practice. For example, the case of restoring the Qianqi from the Confucius era integrates educational implications, creative design, and hands-on practice. After qualitative analysis and calculation, a model can be designed and demonstrated on the desktop, which is a good “motto”.
Science is a knowledge system and a process of exploration.
This book focuses on interdisciplinary integration, from which readers can see a concise history of scientific development, important models of different disciplines, many interesting challenge projects, the principles of quick analysis and explanation of life phenomena, and ubiquitous The thinking methods and problem-solving skills see most of the courses you have learned but are completely different. The subject content includes astronomy, geography, human history, such as Chinese, “Confucius’s Family Language” in “Recovering the Spear”; mathematics, “Rediscovering Kepler’s Laws” to perform various operations on data and find laws; physics, ” Lens Imaging in “Microscopes and Telescopes”; Biology, Inheritance and Variation in “Important Models in the Field of Life Sciences”; Geography, Models of the Universe in “From Earth to Heliocentrism”; Music, Tens in “Distance from Guitar Frets” The law of two equals; sports, the principle of back-and-forth in “The Way of the High Jump”; art, the principle of perspective in “The Circumference of the Earth”; computers, the idea of complementing numbers in “Pascal’s Calculator”; labor skills, “Duckling” Hands-on practice in “Downhill”; logic, logical judgment in “Critical Thinking”; ideological and political, the joy of creating happiness by yourself in “Looking for Clover”; English, “The Story of the Dodo and the Tree” in the British Museum of Natural History Information; history, “How Mechanics Archaeologically” introduces the records of celestial phenomena in the Song Dynasty; etc.
This book emphasizes interdisciplinary integration and focuses on practice. For example, in the introduction of “Restoration of Sasaware—How to Embody the Mean of Confucius”, from the time of Confucius and its restoration, the characteristics of Chinese culture are demonstrated with a device, which well reflects the “full stroke damage, Chinese culture that benefits from modesty. This theme organically integrates history, science, technology, engineering, mathematics, Chinese, ideology and politics, etc., and draws out the artifacts through historical records (involving ancient Chinese and fake characters). In order to restore it, qualitative analysis (involving scientific principles, analyzing methods, etc.), and finally make demonstrations (involving mathematics, technology, engineering, etc.). Of course, the content and works are of educational significance (involving ideological and political issues).
The book introduces “Looking for Clover – How to Create Happiness by Yourself”, which organically integrates mathematics, history, art, biology, technology, engineering, ideology and politics. The golden section value is derived from the number sequence (involving mathematics, history, art), and then the four-leaf rose line is derived from the prophecy of finding a four-leaf clover (involving fables, biology, mathematics), and finally the author changes the fable, from finding to creating, into Physical objects (from the success of a very small number of people to the success of the majority, involving technology, engineering, ideology and politics).
The book uses common phenomena in daily life and study, as well as interesting histories or devices in science and engineering, to analyze the principles behind them, methods of thinking, and the inspiration they give us.
This book focuses on using the knowledge learned to analyze the principles behind the cases. On the one hand, it allows readers to understand how the theory is applied in practice. On the other hand, the conclusions in the cases are inspiring, allowing readers to feel that although the conclusions are obtained from different disciplines, the It has a more universal meaning, thus transcending knowledge itself. This book advocates a kind of “design-based learning” that integrates qualitative analysis, quantitative calculations, creative design, and hands-on practice, and finally draws educational conclusions and demonstrates them with real objects. The book contains many creative challenge projects. Most of the activities in the book’s “Hands-On and Practice”, such as “Weighing an Elephant on a Spring Scale”, “Flying Needle Through Glass”, “Hooking a Mobile Phone from a Refrigerator”, etc., have also been made into popular science programs by CCTV. “Duck Down the Mountain” became the TV show “Come on!” A program from “Toward the Future”.
Education is to cultivate talents with good personality, strong action ability, good thinking quality and deep creative potential. With the reform of compulsory education science courses, giving full play to the educational value of science courses and cultivating students’ core competencies has become the theme of the times in science education.
Scientific thinking is the core of scientific core literacy. This book focuses on cultivating readers’ scientific thinking methods and helping readers improve their creativity. Scientific thinking can be cultivated in the later stage. It is different from other thinking models. Its uniqueness lies in practice, and practice is based on objective observation. It also needs to use logical thinking tools such as analysis, induction, and deduction to analyze the observed Data is processed, analyzed, and repeatedly scrutinized and tempered to obtain opinions.
Once you have learned knowledge, you must be able to use knowledge to solve problems. A good method can get twice the result with half the effort. This book is not only a popular science book on scientific thinking methods, but also a book that stimulates curiosity and cultivates creativity. Popular science publishing must not only adhere to the foundation of popular science, but also focus on the people-oriented characteristics and improve core competencies. This book focuses on the effectiveness of popular science education and science and technology communication. It not only imparts scientific knowledge, but also strengthens the combination of theory and practice. The author pays attention to the diversity of popular science education in content creation and design concepts. While imparting knowledge, he pays more attention to the teaching methods.
Knowledge is power, and the premise is to use knowledge flexibly to solve problems. With exquisite illustrations, interesting knowledge, ingenious methods, creative practices, and broad perspectives, this is a book written by scientists for readers.
Interesting science, inspiring thinking, I hope you can think like a scientist and practice like an engineer!
