Modeling

"[M]odeling requires and therefore teaches many imaginative skills" (Root-Bernstein, 230).

"Models can be formulated only after a real system or situation has been intensively observed, simplified by abstracting critical features, rescaled for human manipulation, and embodied physically or expressed in some verbal, mathematical, or artistic form. Its actual construction, whether the model is a physical or an intellectual one, requires experience with different mediums and careful analysis of their relative strengths and weaknesses. Once the model has been made, experimenting or playing with it determines whether the properties modeled are accurate abstractions of real situations or systems. Models that render imperceptible phenomena accessible to direct cognition require strong imaging skills. Models that "stand in" for the "real thing" depend upon analogizing and abstracting. Nearly all models utilize dimensional-thinking skills as well. Clearly, modeling, is a higher-order thinking tool dependent upon the skilled use of many of the tools discussed in this book." (Root-Bernstein, 230)

"Models can be [|smaller than life], [|life-sized], or [|bigger]; [|physical] or [|mathematical]; [|realistic] or [|not], depending on their intended uses" (Root-Bernstein, 229). The ultimate model of American culture is none other than [|Barbie]. You can follow the trends of our country through her fashions and personas. We have models for learning, practicing, understanding and even entertaining. While at Madame Tussaud's wax museum in Washington, D.C., I learned about history through the life-like exhibits, such as Rosa Park's bus seat that shook and knocked you around while jeers blasted out of the speakers around you, and was entertained by the wide variety of celebrities caught in their most noted personality traits.





"The important thing in a model is not the materials from which it is made, but the ideas or functions it embodies and the effort made by the modeler to understand every detail of the recreation. The model is nothing until endowed with "life" by the efforts of imagination" (Root-Bernstein, 244).