Listening+to+others+with+understanding+and+empathy

//Sometimes we ridicule or put down the ideas of others in a group situation. Interrupting when someone is talking shows a lack of respect for that person's idea. Devote your mental energy to another and invest in your partner's ideas. Wisdom is the reward for a lifetime of listening.//
 * Listening to others with understanding and empathy**

I always learn new things when working with a group of people, but there was one time in particular when I truly learned the importance of listening to others' ideas, when I was working with Tait and Sam in investigating the heat content of snack foods.

The objective of the experiment was to burn several types of snack foods (peanuts and chips) in order to determine their heat content per gram. Though we were given a general procedure and set up to follow, it was up to our group to figure out the most efficient way to perform the experiment. One of the biggest obstacles to overcome in the set up was to figure out a way to isolate the snack food that was being burned, so that as little heat escaped as possible (the goal was to have as much of the heat as possible from the burning food be absorbed by the water in the soda can). I looked around and saw that many other groups were attempting to build walls made of aluminum foil around their burning food, but not many of these attempts appeared to be successful; there were still a lot of openings where a lot of heat could escape.

I was about to go get some aluminum foil to attempt to build my own wall for our group, when Tait and Sam found a giant beaker, and suggested putting the burning food inside the beaker, and then covering the whole thing with aluminum foil on top, to trap the heat inside the beaker. At first, I was skeptical of this idea simply because no one else was doing anything like it; every other group was using aluminum foil! However, I came to my senses eventually and realized that this was an ingenious solution to our problem.

Our set up ended up looking like this:

We were able to successfully carry out the experiment and different trials using this set up. Though a lot of heat was still lost, overall, this method was pretty effective. If I hadn't listened to Tait and Sam's idea of using the large beaker, and had persuaded them to use just aluminum foil instead because that's what all of the other groups were doing, then the results of our experiment would definitely have been different, and maybe not as accurate. Through this activity, I realized the significance of listening to and trying out other people's ideas, even if they don't seem practical at first. I also learned that just because everyone else is doing something in the same way doesn't mean that it's the most effective way.

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