Goodie bags are mini-experiment kits used in the fall semester offering of 3.091. Prof. Grossman came up with them as a way to give students a “hands-on” way of “feeling” the chemistry, intended to bring key elements of the course material to life and encourage exploration. In 3.091, students learn through doing and explore class topics for themselves.
Nine goodie bags cover the following topics in the fall:
In each bag, students find a few materials along with a problem sheet. They’re asked to try something out based upon what they received and then answer questions posed.
While the goodie bags are not graded, some of the weekly quiz questions tie in directly with the goodie bag assignments (and students need to bring some part of the bag with them to the quiz to use), so students who do the GB’s usually ace those questions.
(And yes, while students could just get answers from another student who did the problems, exploring it yourself vs. having an answer fed to you is like the difference between eating a tasty meal and reading the menu.)