When kids discover positive feedback spirals (often called “snowballing feedback spirals” because things can grow very quickly in the same way that one can start with a snowball and roll it into a snowman), they can get so excited that their excitement contributes to the feedback spiral snowballing ever faster. Last week, kindergarten students had gotten their hands on a small container that they had filled with water and poured into a small depression in the playground. This water began soaking in, softening the surface layer of dirt. Their small hands could scrape some of this into mud that could be played with outside the depression. When the mud is scraped away, the depression becomes larger, able to hold more water, produce more mud and thereby grow ever faster. By the time I noticed, the hole was a foot across and the kids were covered with mud.
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