Introduction

Edison created what is known as the "teamwork" laboratory. He believed that inventions and research could best be accomplished by great minds working together. His laboratory is the basis for the majority of our current laboratories and research development places. While he didn't invent teamwork, he made it popular. Until Edison, most inventors worked by themselves for many years, sometimes giving up because they couldn't solve problems by themselves.

A good example of this is the light bulb. Since 1802, over 20 different inventors had been working to solve the problem of lighting the world. Most of them had been working by themselves and weren't using the other inventors' research or solutions. When Edison set out to create the light bulb, he encouraged the inventors and scientists who worked for him to concentrate on this single problem. Suddenly, there were ten people working on the problem instead of just one. Ten people working meant ten times the amount of time and energy and the "cross-pollination" of ideas, which improved the chances of success more than tenfold.

Everyone seems to agree that Thomas Edison was also a man of persistence. He had a high persistence threshold. He wanted to make a light using electricity. Apparently the solution was to pass a current through a thin wire, a filament, and have it glow. But what filament? Edison tried hundreds of different materials before finding a thin strand of the material that worked.

This video on Thomas Edison is about using teamwork and persistence in science and science fair projects. In the video two very different girls learn they have to work together to get the job done. Is there anyone in your class with whom you work especially well? Is there anyone in your class that you think you wouldn't work with well? Why? Do you think your differences could make a better team? When do you think teamwork is a good idea? Is there ever a time when it is a bad idea? Have you ever had to work on a team that didn't work well? Why do you think that happened? What could you have done to keep that from happening?