This was very useful to me later in life, when I was trying to learn how to solve mathematical word problems. Many students who had just learned to manipulate numbers on the page had no idea what pluses and minus signs had to do with adding or subtracting apples from oranges. Only by actively imagining yourself in a store, and going through the physical processes of purchasing and figuring out change do mathematical concepts become real to a young child. This hands-on approach has also been useful for me in the study of science. I always enjoyed labs because they allowed me to put the abstract equations on the chalkboard into practice. It can be hard to understand what a chemical equation means unless you see what the chemical process resembles in the real world. Even something simple, like the fact that molecules in a solid are farther apart than in a liquid or a gas becomes...

The process of experimentation, which forces the student to ask questions, is also useful in terms of stirring up a student's intellectual curiosity about the ways the world works. And this approach acts as an additional stimulus to a scientist in training, as the budding scientist must ask, 'what would happen if I tried...to weight the tip of the paper airplane to make it more aerodynamic?' In other words, hands-on experimentation and questioning is a stimulus to creative problem-solving, and creative-problem solving is a useful and proactive approach to take for both student scientists in the lab and for people engaged in the struggles of their daily, personal lives.