I not so sure that when the student suggests “because of heat conduction”, they are attempting to provide a full explanation.
I model their internal thinking more along the lines of “Well, I don’t know for sure what’s going on here, this is an obscure effect I’ve not come across before, but it seems plausible to me that it will be in some way connected with conduction, so I’ll suggest that as a first step, and hope someone else can fill in the mathematical details for me.”
It is closer to the situation when a company owner says to her managers “Production has dropped by 50% in the last quarter, what’s the cause and what can we do about this?” and a manger replies “Well, I don’t know for sure, but I think it might have something to do with the recent marketing campaign where we changed the product name to ‘Yucko’.”
I not so sure that when the student suggests “because of heat conduction”, they are attempting to provide a full explanation.
I model their internal thinking more along the lines of “Well, I don’t know for sure what’s going on here, this is an obscure effect I’ve not come across before, but it seems plausible to me that it will be in some way connected with conduction, so I’ll suggest that as a first step, and hope someone else can fill in the mathematical details for me.”
It is closer to the situation when a company owner says to her managers “Production has dropped by 50% in the last quarter, what’s the cause and what can we do about this?” and a manger replies “Well, I don’t know for sure, but I think it might have something to do with the recent marketing campaign where we changed the product name to ‘Yucko’.”
hmm. surely that would affect sales first?