Experience teaches and the more profoundly moved we are by the experience, the more we are likely to be stimulated to think and learn. Going out to the field is one way to achieve this. Dewey was sceptical of extrinsic rewards in education. Pleasure is not the point of field trips but a means to invite the thinking mind mto the complexities and wonders of the phenomenal world around us. In the case of the hydrological cycle, ie effects of water on ie landscape are dramatic but often require an educated eye to see them. For example, at the Connecticut state park of Hammonasset, there are boulders of all different kinds of rock on the shore line. The variety is striking when it is pointed out. Without thinking one would imagine they had been tipped there by trucks until one thinks again—they are far too big for that. With the aid of geological maps one can realize that the rocks took a ride on a glacier from the last ice age. At the entrance to the park there are gneiss rocks that show the markings and shaping of the glacier through polishing and scraping as it passed over the rock. The stack of rocks found by the waters edge are the remains of rocks that rode the glacier as on a conveyor belt from as far off as Canada. There are many kinds of minerals to be found here, including iron ores.
Rather than supply students with elements out of a bottle or can, they can collect their own minerals so as to test for ionization in water. They can heat them to see if the water will come out of the crystal, and find out its changed physical properties. Students can mechanically test rocks to find out rates of dissolution in water under different mechanical, physical and chemical conditions. Crystals can be made to remind students how water enters into rocks and can stay locked up for eons of time.