Family Life
In 1948, Karplus married Elizabeth Frazier, whom he had met at an international folk dance group he organized while at Harvard. They had seven children born between 1950 and 1962. When the oldest child, Beverly, was 7, Karplus accepted her invitation to present a science lesson on electricity to her third-grade class, using the Wimshurst machine he had inherited from his grandfather. Unfortunately, while the children enjoyed the demonstration, the lesson was a conceptual disaster. This stimulated Karplus to think about how to teach science better, and as the other children entered school, he continued to visit their classes on a "show and tell" basis with various science experiments or demonstrations. Conversing with his children and their classmates, he became increasingly interested in children's learning, reasoning, and science concept development.
Read more about this topic: Robert Karplus
Famous quotes containing the words family and/or life:
“A real hangover is nothing to try out family remedies on. The only cure for a real hangover is death.”
—Robert Benchley (1889–1945)
“The American grips himself, at the very sources of his consciousness, in a grip of care: and then, to so much of the rest of life, is indifferent. Whereas, the European hasn’t got so much care in him, so he cares much more for life and living.”
—D.H. (David Herbert)