An AI science tutor for elementary and middle school

Does the amount of light affect how tall a bean plant grows?

Many science lessons ask students to plan an investigation. Here's how the tutor helps a grade 5 student think it through:

1. What will you change? The amount of light (for example, a sunny windowsill, a shady corner and a dark cupboard). This is the independent variable.
2. What will you measure? The height of each plant after two weeks, in centimetres. This is the dependent variable.
3. What must stay the same? The type of seed, the pot and soil, the amount of water and the temperature. These are control variables. If one plant got more water, you couldn't tell whether light or water made the difference.
4. How will you make it reliable? Grow several plants in each place and compare the averages.

The tutor asks the student each question in turn ("What do you think you should keep the same?") rather than listing the answers.

For middle school students learning about density: a block has a mass of 120 g and a volume of 40 cm³. Will it float in water?

1. Density is mass divided by volume: $\rho = \dfrac{m}{V} = \dfrac{120}{40} = 3\ \text{g/cm}^3$.
2. Water has a density of about $1\ \text{g/cm}^3$.
3. The block is denser than water, so it sinks.

A follow-up question checks the idea rather than the arithmetic: if you cut the block in half, would the half float? (No: both mass and volume halve, so the density is still $3\ \text{g/cm}^3$.)

Courses differ between countries and schools, so tell the tutor what your class is studying; we don't claim to cover any curriculum in full.

A grade 2 student asking why puddles disappear gets a short answer about the sun warming water until it turns into an invisible gas, with an everyday example such as washing drying on a line. A grade 8 student asking the same thing gets an explanation of evaporation in terms of particles gaining energy and escaping from the surface of the liquid, plus a question about why puddles dry faster on a windy day.

The tutor uses the grade chosen at sign-up, introduces scientific words with a plain explanation, and checks the student understands them before using them again.

Science often needs a picture: a food chain, a circuit, the water cycle or a table of results. Students can draw on the whiteboard with a mouse, finger or stylus, or write out their working, and ask the tutor to check it. If it can't read part of the drawing or writing, it asks the student to type it rather than guessing.

It can't watch or supervise experiments: practical work should follow the teacher's instructions and be supervised by an adult. It also can't see your textbook, so if a question refers to a diagram, describe it or draw it on the whiteboard. Like any AI tutor it can make mistakes, so compare important answers with your notes or ask your teacher.