Hank Green, car colors, and the early stages of the research process

Welcome new subscribers! If you like what you read, please consider forwarding this newsletter to someone else you think would enjoy it. And if someone forwarded this newsletter to you please consider subscribing!

I was working on a post about what we accept as evidence, but then Hank Green posted a video about car colors and I had to change gears (genuinely not sure whether or not I intended that pun). 

Hank Green, for those unfamiliar, is a YouTuber, science communicator, and author (and brother of author John Green). He is enthusiastic and curious about many things in the world, and his videos are always a delight. This one caught my attention because of the way he shares his process of question-asking and inquiry.

The video is definitely worth watching in full (and Hank, if you’re somehow reading this, I am very interested in the unedited 26-minute-long version) but the short version is: Hank starts with a question about why car colors seem to look different (like clay, or wet putty) and then follows a trail to find out why and how. I rewatched the video and did my best to map out the journey Hank goes on.

What I love about this video is that it’s an excellent demonstration of the early stages of the research process - a part of the process that many students struggle with. We encourage students to explore their topics, to use their sources to find key terms and ideas, to follow links to new information, and to generate new questions based on what they’re learning. But it can be hard to describe what that looks like in action, especially when students aren’t often given time to really explore. There is also not a lot of incentive for what can feel like unstructured exploration when there are deadlines and grades hovering over them. 

I’d argue, however, that this kind of question exploration does not need to be rigidly structured in order to be productive. The open-endedness is actually the point. However, being unstructured is not the same as being aimless, and I want to highlight some moments from the video that demonstrate this.

1. He identifies what it is he’s curious about: what has changed about car colors, and how is his brain interpreting these new colors. These are big, broad questions but great for initial exploration. He also prioritizes by saying we need to figure out what’s happening before we dig into what’s happening in our brains.

2. He defines, as best he can, what it is he’s looking for with both examples and a description (car color that looks like clay). This initial search helps him confirm (via Reddit r/cars) that other people have noticed this same thing and are curious about it; there is a conversation happening that he can listen to and participate in.

3. He identifies important vocabulary and ideas: metal flake¹ , metallic paint, Nardo Grey by Audi, putty (a surprisingly useful search term).

4. He iterates on his searches until he finds a useful one, abandoning searches for [nardo grey investigation] and [nardo grey article] as not helpful. Describing the cars as clay-colored was also not useful. His wild swing search [cars look like putty now] was successful and while that may seem like luck, I think it worked because he was using words that he was expecting to find in his answer, rather than using words from his question. It’s a subtle shift, but it can make a huge difference in search results.

5. He uses the first article he finds as a stepping stone and follows a link to the original source of the reporting. Blackbird Spyplane is not a source I’m familiar with, but a little lateral searching (which I’m going to assume Hank did in part of the video that was cut) makes me confident that this source is unlikely to be fabricating information.

6. He incorporates new information and terminology (this style of paint job dates to the 1950s, the colors are grey-shaded, this color trend extends beyond cars, etc.). 

7. He identifies and evaluates existing theories about why this style of paint job has become popular. This is the kind of thing we’re asking students to do when they’re exploring a topic - identify the areas of debate and discussion and figure out you’re way in to that scholarly conversation.

8. Within those areas of discussion he identifies one that is of particular interest to him: what motivates people when choosing a color for their car, how do trends change over time, and how does this cultural knowledge of what “looks weird” spread.

There is a lot more going on during his process (and we don’t even get to see all of it) but this is what unstructured exploration of a new topic looks like.

One other thing that makes a huge difference in his process is his disposition towards research. He is curious and, crucially, he is resilient. He does not frame dead ends as failures, but instead as new starting points. This can be one of the hardest parts of the process for students to get comfortable with, and I don’t blame them. Schools are not really built for open-ended exploration. There is always a deadline, and deadlines are not conducive to curiosity. If your research process ends with more questions than when you began, you have “failed.” The end goal (a paper, a presentation, a certain number of sources) is usually determined before you begin. There is an urgency to settle on a topic/question so research can begin. And students do not get time to practice this process of exploring a question without a defined end and without the pressure of being sure the question is “good enough” to lead to sustained research and a debatable thesis. We treat curiosity as a means to an end, and not an end in and of itself. I do believe in the value of digging more deeply into questions and analyzing and synthesizing information; but if we don’t develop the skills and dispositions for open-ended exploration students are building those skills on a weak foundation.  

Hank’s exploration of the shift in car colors also highlights the broad range of questions that can come from any one topic. A few I wrote down while watching the video:

• What are the components of automotive paint? How has it changed over time, and what has changed about the manufacturing process/paint technology?

• How do we interpret colors? How do our eyes/brains interpret color, and how do cultural norms and trends influence our perception of color?

• How do trends for consumer products spread? Do they always start with high-end products and then spread? Do they start in particular markets/areas of the country? What are the jobs that are influential in these shifts?

• What do we know about how people make decisions about large purchases? How do we balance our desire for individuality with our desire to fit in?

These questions cover a range of disciplines, and can easily overlap. We don’t often give students the space and time to explore questions that extend across different areas of study, but I wonder if making space for those explorations — for unstructured curiosity — could be a stepping stone to doing more interdisciplinary work in schools.

^{1 This is only tangentially related, but if you have not read this NYTimes article about glitter I cannot recommend it highly enough.}

Thanks for reading! Want to work with me to help your community develop the skills they need to be savvy consumers and creators of information? Get in touch!