Today we managed to teach our first class – and it went pretty well! I have one confession to make, though – we did not take any pictures during the class. I promise I won’t be as negligent the next time.

The idea of this class is to introduce students to empirical science using very simple experiments. We’ve posted an explanation of what we want to teach before we left for Rwanda here. During the first week, we want to reproduce something similar to Galileo’s experiments on rolling balls down inclined planes.

Pretty funny, right? We come to a place called Kepler and now we’re going over to Galileo and introducing the scientific method in the process. I guess it’s a good omen or something like that?

For our first class, though, we wanted to talk to the students here about what they thought science was and give some initial thought on how to approach problems. After a little discussion of some questions that we asked:

• What do you think is experimentation?
• What makes it different from a project?
• What are some examples of experiments that you know?
• How were they successful or not successful?
• What are some characteristics of scientists?

We moved on to a little exercise with numbers… the idea is that the instructor gives 3 sets of numbers, for instance:

3,5,7 | 6,8,10 | 0,2,4

and then asks  what the rule the instructor imagined behind the numbers is. Well, it can be as easy as “add 2 every time”, but if my rule were “any natural number” the students would be guessing for a long time. What we really want them to do is ask questions about the rule by supplying us with new sets of numbers. It takes a while until people start coming up with new kinds of sequences. In a similar example, most students kept asking whether another sequence that obeys the rule “subtract 1 from the preceding number” obeys my rule – even though my rule was “any whole number” – until suddenly one student asked: does “7,8,11” obey the rule? The whole room was pretty shocked that it worked.

We tried asking which steps they had gone through while asking some of the new questions and gave them a short introduction to the general scientific process of hypothesis-based experimentation. In the end, we gave them all lab notebooks and sent them to their next class.

It’s been a while since we’ve blogged, because we’ve been really busy this week. Aside from this being our first week of teaching (see Jakob’s post below), we’ve also finally had a chance to scout out some materials for our class.

Last weekend, Simon, the IT guru and resident electrical engineer of Kepler, took us to town to poke in some of the electronics shops. (Everybody here calls the town center as just “town”.) There are many tiny electronics shops in town and also elsewhere in the city, like in Kimironko where Kepler is. Some shops will sell ready-made and imported electronics, like phones, computers, and radios. But others, which we are very interested in, sell lower-level parts. We managed to find soldering irons, clothing irons (which we can possibly recycle to make a heater for chemicals), BNC cables and connectors, recycled loose electronics parts (although those were quite pricey). This should help us get the electronics module of our course started.

The funny thing is that the prices for us “umuzungus” or “foreigners” are largely inflated. Even if we are with Simon, the prices will be inflated for him. So when we do need to get these parts, the best thing to do is to tell Simon what he wants, and he’ll come back alone to by them….

The “Quincailleries” or hardware stores around in town and also out of town have practically all the tools that we need to build housings for experiments: screwdrivers, wrenches, light bulbs, saws, and more. The ones in town are much better stocked than the ones outside of town, some of which tend to be more of stores that sell spare household parts like lamps, tiles, and mirrors.

Afterwards, Simon met with his friend from Nyamata, and we all went out to lunch together at a Rwandan buffet. We’ve been to a few already, and the food is really tasty! There’s typically cooked bananas, cassava, sweet potatoes, fried potatoes, rice, green beans, and a small portion of meat. Simon and his friend loaded up on giant portions, which we were told was standard for a meal–otherwise, it might be considered strange or rude for the host. From their shocked expressions of my meager plate, my portion apparently fell into that category. Over lunch, we learned that yawning is sometimes considered a sign that you’re hungry. And eating tomatillas (tree tomatoes, which are these teardrop-shaped fruits with a slight sour taste) is believed by some people in Rwandan to give you blood, as in after you’ve lost blood from an injury. Sometimes, friends and family will bring tomatillas to loved ones in the hospital, in hopes of speeding their recovery.

After lunch, both Jakob and I promptly yawned on accident, eliciting laughter from the other two.

We finally got to check out the chemical suppliers here in town this thursday. In the morning, we tried going on our own to find AfriChem. After walking around in the upper part of downtown (this is confusing in Kigali, since the middle of downtown is on top of a hill), we managed to get some proper directions and found AfriChem halfway down the hill. They were very nice, though they wouldn’t tell us prices or availability right away – but we got to talk to the managing director, Paolo, and we will hopefully have an offer for a list of chemicals soon.

All of this took us a lot more time than anticipated, so we were in quite a hurry getting back to class. We continued taking data on the modified Galileo experiment. For this day, we were trying to have the students modify the very simplistic protocols we gave them. We talked to some extent about the issues students were having the day before – for instance, that it is very difficult to try and measure time with a stopwatch accurately if the time being measured is less than one second. The students did come up with several ideas to make more accurate measurements – using a video camera and analyze the frames, use a lower angle of the board with the floor so that the ball rolls slower or using a longer board. The only idea they decided to put into action was using a smaller angle, even though several students had figured out how to take and analyze videos on their computers. Unfortunately, this meant there was very little data that the students could use to show the results. Good lesson for next time – make sure that students aren’t wasting their time and get right to the data first.

After class, Ernest took us in to town to look at two other suppliers, Kipharma and Duphar. Kipharma mostly specializes on medicine and medical equipment, though they have a very decent supply of acids, bases and simple solvents, as well as some school supplies. They actually have multiple shops around town, but those are mostly for pharmaceuticals – only the main supply depot in downtown has more materials. Duphar, on the other hand, has a large depot that mainly serves school laboratories. This includes equipment, such as glassware, filters and even stirbars next to the chemicals for use at schools. The director of Duphar took us on a tour of their supply depot, both for chemicals and for general lab supplies – they also have physics lab equipment, such as magnets, voltmeter, ampmeters and even an electroscope.

In general, it looks like most chemicals here are inorganic salts – there are only a few organic chemicals around, so synthetic chemistry here would be pretty difficult. On the other hand, nobody is synthesizing any chemicals here, so that makes sense. It also means that supplier industry is a very different business here than in the US. Catalogs of chemicals are kept secret, lest the competition can see what is being offered and buy different items – not that there would be much demand, since it seems that the primary users of chemicals and glassware are those secondary schools with enough funding to build a science lab. Nevertheless, most standard solvents, a large variety of inorganic salts, some elements such as sulfur and bromine as well as standard glassware is available here – though some parts are almost prohibitively expensive and we will definitely try to find substitutes.

During the times when we weren’t teaching on Tuesday and Wednesday of last week, we were thinking about how to renovate our lab space. The space is large, but in dire need of a new roof, possibly new walls, ventilation, lighting, and counters. We met up with Straton, the architect of the Maranyundo Girls School, whom I had met in a seminar at Tufts about two months ago. He was very kind to me at the time, and has continually be very kind to us during our time in Rwanda!

We had many questions for him about how he built up the lab space at Maranyundo and what sorts of building materials are common in Rwanda. Here are some sketches of our ideal lab space that we showed him:

Even though the Ministry of Education requires that all lab spaces have a large number of sinks, there is a way to amend that requirement, according to Straton. We only need 3 sinks in our space, on the chemistry counter top, along with a home-made fumehood, heaters, and an eyewash. On the opposite side of the room, we will have a soldering station and a permanent computer for data analysis. Ideally, the students would take their projects to the middle of the room, where we will have ~6 big tables (2 groups each). The small room to the side can be converted into a storage room for chemicals and a dark room for experiments with light. Straton also suggested having a ~4000L water tank to supply the sinks and safety shower, which the storage room may already have.

The following day we discovered one of the best resources we’ve had so far! Christian and Andrew at the MASS design group (http://www.massdesigngroup.org/). They design and build hospitals and other structures across East Africa. Much like Straton, their goal is to use as many locally available materials as possible. For instance, they found a way to turn volcanic ash into exterior wall panels, and it’s a stylish option that many of their clients are making use of.

We brainstormed ways to substitute for common chemistry and physics lab materials: perhaps glass-coated ceramics for glassware, custom-made metal apparatuses for distillation equipment, glasses lenses for optics. In general, it’s very easy to get a custom-made metal structure from one of the metal-working shops, if you know exactly what you want. There are definitely interesting materials available locally (if not made locally), especially in the Quincailleries, as we’ve also discovered.

In class on Tuesday, we started introducing the students to uncertainties in measurements. After talking about the difference between statistical and systematic uncertainties, we had the students measure the volume of a cuboid (inspired by J-Lab!). Some of the main lessons were that we’re able to get beyond mm precision on a ruler, and that combining errors for something like the volume doesn’t involve just multiplying length error by width error by height error.

Wednesday, we started the Galileo experiment. Many of the students experienced the obvious problem–the times that they wanted to measure of the ball rolling down were far too short for them to react. Only 2 groups realized that it might be helpful to make multiple measurements, so that was still a lesson that needed to be reinforced in the students.

We finally arrived back in Boston two days ago. After a 24-hour plane ride that started with wearing t-shirts and light pants, we were thrown into freezing cold temperatures and mounds of snow on the ground! What a shock it was for us. We’re missing Rwanda, the warm temperatures, fresh fruits, friendly handshakes, and Kepler!

Our last week in Rwanda was quite the whirlwind. In our class, we started the week of independent projects that were from the students’ own ideas. They thought up experiments like showing that 2 parallel mirrors make an infinite number of images, showing that an egg will get sucked into a bottle with a too-small opening by air pressure, measuring the dependence of a pendulum’s period on its start angle, and much more. We were very pleasantly surprised that all of the students had ideas that they wanted to test–that shows to us that they are thinking independently and are self-motivated.

Our role during the independent projects was to guide them through what they wanted to test. At the end of the week before, every group of 2 submitted a proposal for their project, including what they want to test and how they want to test it. Some projects had a large scope–measuring the boiling points of too many different kinds of liquids for instance, and we helped them make the projects smaller and more manageable.

Not all of the experiments worked out–as we had expected. It was partly due to equipment malfunctioning–inaccurate thermometers, not being able to buy an electronic balance because of its ridiculously high price. But those were actually good barriers for the students to deal with, since materials limitations are also very much the problems of real scientists. Other experiments didn’t work out because the students didn’t have enough time. This is something that we could stress more in our future lab class–that time is limited, and using it to your advantage is the most important lesson that a scientist can learn.

At the end of the week, every group gave a 10 minute presentation + 3 minutes questions. We had samosas and cakes to snack on, and the room quickly filled with other Kepler students. I was excited to see how excited they were to learn about their peers’ projects. They asked very critical questions and made the presenters think–and the presenters were very good at responding to the questions!

It ended up being a very fun class to teach, and it both better taught us how to interact with the Kepler students and taught the students what to expect in the course we teach next year. We’ll talk about the rest of the week’s happenings in the next post!

Now, one week after we’ve come back from Rwanda, we’ve had a bit of time to reflect on our experience there. First off, we’re very grateful to the MIT Public Service Center for supplying us with a fellowship to go and to the IDEAS Global Challenge for getting us a small grant for materials. It’s really wonderful that we can get funding for an idea like this from within MIT. Looking back on our time in Rwanda, we also noticed again just how great it was that we found Kepler to work with. They are an incredibly flexible organization, the students are smart and receive good training and everybody was very welcoming and helpful, far beyond what we had hoped for.

Looking Back:

What we managed to do over January:

– Get to know people at Kepler and learn about their vision, teaching methods and how our lab would fit in. The general idea is that Kepler wants to expand access to high-quality education through distance learning programs while training students to succeed locally through in-person seminars and internships. At this time, they only offer degrees in business, communication and health care management, but they are actively looking to expand. The content for all classes is currently supplied by Southern New Hampshire University and teachers mostly try to make students work through projects in groups – they are very big on flipped classroom methods here, similar to our introductory physics classes at MIT. Our lab would be another class that students could take in preparation for their degrees – and possibly jump-start the science program.

– Find teachers, staff and students who are interested in our project and will help us prepare, build, teach or take over the lab. We were not expecting so many of the staff at Kepler to buy into our project – we found two former secondary school physics teachers, Ernest Niyigena and Obed Bigirimana who were interested in a role of co-teaching our class, and got a lot of help connecting to universities and companies from Ernest and Jackson Vugayabagabo. Simon, the computer technician at Kepler, also helped us source material (especially electronics) – and since one of our proposed sets of experiments is based on electronics, we’ll be very happy to keep working with him.

– Teach a short course at Kepler on scientific methods, empiricism and error analysis. For the two weeks that we had, we managed to introduce some new ways of thinking – hopefully that will give us a good place to start next year. We also got a much better idea of what students are prepared to do and what sorts of things they already know. There are many students who specialized in science in secondary school – which means they have quite a lot of theoretical background, similar to a college freshman or sophomore in the US after taking one or two introductory level science courses. Most of these kids are really excited about science and are very enthusiastic about taking our course. However, our laboratory course will be the first exposure to hands-on science that most of them will have had – especially experiments  that are longer than one session.

– Source materials in Kigali. We’ve written a bunch about our adventures – with local hardware stores (Quincailleries), Chemical and general laboratory Suppliers and Electronics Stores. We’ve also negotiated with optical shops for lenses, jewelers for noble metal wires, talked to a few companies about where they source their materials from, discussed building materials with laboratory technicians and architects. All in all, there will definitely be enough material to make a laboratory without importing very many things personally – perhaps some programmable control elements for electronics, but no large pieces. On the other hand, very many materials are already imported, since there is a small market for laboratory supplies with the more affluent secondary schools, and those materials are correspondingly expensive. For instance a small electronic balance (0.1 g resolution) costs between 50,000 and 350,000 Rwandan francs – $ 100 to $ 500. Yeah, lab equipment in the US is expensive, too, but then add importing them to a landlocked country in the middle of Africa… and a quasi monopolistic market with little leeway for bargaining and I guess that’s what you get. And there’s no alternative market – whereas here, there are $ 8 kitchen balances down to 0.01 g on Amazon.

– Tour other institutions of higher learning. We’re really grateful to Jimmy Gasore and Jackson Vugayabagabo for getting us contacts at the college of science and technology, to Ernest Niyigena for connecting us to the college of education and to Prince Dukundane Gashongore for arranging a visit to the maker community at the integrated polytechnic regional center. These visits were very helpful for us to determine the current state of laboratory education here, the issues and problems people currently encounter as well as opening possibilities for collaboration. Labs in Rwanda are currently not oriented towards teaching people how to solve practical problems – mostly, lab curricula consist of simple, straightforward experiments to support the learning of some concept which students learn in their theoretical classes. And even at institutions that have good labs, such as the college of science and technology, the labs are often not used to the full extent – possibly because many instructors fear that instruments will break and they won’t be able to replace them. For our lab, it means that making and maintaining our own equipment is more important than we thought.

– Visit other groups in Rwanda that have an interest in practical science. These included secondary schools, such as the Maranyundo girls school, incubators for businesses, government officials and private companies. We had an especially close connection with k-lab, a start-up incubator for IT businesses that is attempting to build a maker space or fablab as well. Claudette at k-lab and Alex from the information and communication technology chamber were responsible for roughly half the connections we got to other institutions in Rwanda. Most groups were very interested in the laboratory and there are numerous opportunities for future collaboration. Since some of the students at Kepler were interning at a start-up at k-lab, this also got us thinking that it might be useful for students to think about science related start-ups.