Why introductory chemistry is boring: a long-term historical perspective
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Re: Why introductory chemistry is boring: a long-term historical perspective
#2Introductory chemistry that would be interesting would trend towards the expensive and the dangerous. I'm not sure how you fix that - high schools are not going to be letting kids do metallurgy or create black powder fireworks, so you are going to be stuck with the mostly pointless and very boring lab work.
Re: Why introductory chemistry is boring: a long-term historical perspective
#3Well, I learned chemistry (UK O-level and A-level) about 50 years ago, and back then you could do almost anything you fancied with the reagents available, which did stop short of things like fluorine, but only just. Did you know you can dip your (dry) fingers into concentrated sulphuric acid and only experience a feeling of warmth, as the acid reacts with the oils of your skin? As to what we got up to with metallic sodium, carcinogenic aromatics, and noxious gases, I shudder to think about now, but we did learn a lot of chemistry on the side. We did have a brilliant teacher, though.
Re: Why introductory chemistry is boring: a long-term historical perspective
#4Organic chemistry is the bomb. I was bored to death with inorganic chemistry, maybe because of the way it was presented, but organic chemistry seemed like suddenly being shown that all the cool stuff in the world is made of lego pieces (carbon atoms), and there's a manual for how to put them together in different ways.
I wasn't exposed to it until university, but I always thought the material would make a good intro course for high school chemistry.
Re: Why introductory chemistry is boring: a long-term historical perspective
#5Introductory chemistry that would be interesting would trend towards the expensive and the dangerous. I'm not sure how you fix that - high schools are not going to be letting kids do metallurgy or create black powder fireworks, so you are going to be stuck with the mostly pointless and very boring lab work.
Making esters (smelly/fruity things) or doing colorful stuff (organic dyes, a bz reaction, etc etc) seems fun and not really dangerous?
Re: Why introductory chemistry is boring: a long-term historical perspective
#6Organic chemistry is the bomb. I was bored to death with inorganic chemistry, maybe because of the way it was presented, but organic chemistry seemed like suddenly being shown that all the cool stuff in the world is made of lego pieces (carbon atoms), and there's a manual for how to put them together in different ways. I wasn't exposed to it until university, but I always thought the material would make a good intro…
The trouble with organic chemistry is that it's a lot harder than inorganic chemistry precisely because of the near-infinite complexities of organic molecules. If you want to teach people the basics, such as how to identify a sample or how to perform analytic chemistry (for example, work out how much of a compound you have got in a volume of solvent), you really have to start with inorganic chemistry.
Re: Why introductory chemistry is boring: a long-term historical perspective
#7Organic chemistry is the bomb. I was bored to death with inorganic chemistry, maybe because of the way it was presented, but organic chemistry seemed like suddenly being shown that all the cool stuff in the world is made of lego pieces (carbon atoms), and there's a manual for how to put them together in different ways. I wasn't exposed to it until university, but I always thought the material would make a good intro…
My experience with organic chemistry was... not good in comparison. Were you a chemistry major?
Re: Why introductory chemistry is boring: a long-term historical perspective
#8Organic chemistry is the bomb. I was bored to death with inorganic chemistry, maybe because of the way it was presented, but organic chemistry seemed like suddenly being shown that all the cool stuff in the world is made of lego pieces (carbon atoms), and there's a manual for how to put them together in different ways. I wasn't exposed to it until university, but I always thought the material would make a good intro…
> all the cool stuff in the world is made of lego pieces (carbon atoms)
Amen. When I introduce organic chemistry, I use the Lego analogy.
I tell the students, "there are zillions of different organic molecules. What's weird is that you only get to 'play' with a small fraction of the periodic table in organic chemistry [C,H,O,N,P,S,F,Cl,Br ...]. So, how do you get 'zillions' of different molecules from a narrow set of elements?"
Then I show them a photo of several 2x2 Legos arranged as 1) a tower, 2) one-way staircase, 3) two-way staircase, 4) "circle"
Organic chem lab is awesome, too. I remember making isoamyl acetate (banana scent) with 30 other students and the whole lab smelled wonderful.
edit: I forgot. I worked with a guy who made a functioning spectrophotometer out of Lego parts and LEDs??. I think he got the idea from a journal devoted to undergraduate chemistry education.
edit2: I didn't read the entire blog post (because...super long), but I agree w/ the parts that I did read. e.g., "[Modern introductory chemistry is] ...sterile chemistry. It’s the equivalent of teaching kids scales before they learn to play a song, or insisting that kids learn grammar before teaching them how to write. It’s chemistry as rote and rules, with no joy to exploration."
A lot of the issue stems from presenting the information to students as if it were "the truth." A lot of what is presented isn't the truth--it's just a reasonable model to explain experimental data. And I think it's beneficial to explain that nuance to students. "This explanation/model works great under most circumstances, but it falls apart over here." I spent a large part of my undergrad years thinking everything I learned was gospel. And I wish my teachers had spent more time discussing model building based on experimental data.
Re: Why introductory chemistry is boring: a long-term historical perspective
#9Introductory chemistry that would be interesting would trend towards the expensive and the dangerous. I'm not sure how you fix that - high schools are not going to be letting kids do metallurgy or create black powder fireworks, so you are going to be stuck with the mostly pointless and very boring lab work.
Making esters (smelly/fruity things) or doing colorful stuff (organic dyes, a bz reaction, etc etc) seems fun and not really dangerous?
That is probably going to appeal to about one half of a typical chemistry class, and leave the other half bored and sullen.
My experience of chemistry was that it was very abstract nonsense that was taught to us, which is incredibly sad, when chemistry is all around us all the time, and understanding how it works is invaluable. There are myriad practical examples to investigate. Why do your baking powder biscuits rise? Why does the octane rating of your gasoline matter? Photography. How does epoxy work? Etc, etc.
What we actually did was a lot of tedious equation balancing on paper, and titrating liquids.
Re: Why introductory chemistry is boring: a long-term historical perspective
#10Organic chemistry is the bomb. I was bored to death with inorganic chemistry, maybe because of the way it was presented, but organic chemistry seemed like suddenly being shown that all the cool stuff in the world is made of lego pieces (carbon atoms), and there's a manual for how to put them together in different ways. I wasn't exposed to it until university, but I always thought the material would make a good intro…
The trouble with organic chemistry is that it's a lot harder than inorganic chemistry precisely because of the near-infinite complexities of organic molecules. If you want to teach people the basics, such as how to identify a sample or how to perform analytic chemistry (for example, work out how much of a compound you have got in a volume of solvent), you really have to start with inorganic chemistry.
On the other hand, understanding molecular bonding is much easier in organic chemistry. Inorganic chemistry mostly requires molecule-by-molecule computational solutions, whereas organic can get you quite far purely with rules of thumb. I majored in chemistry, and it was widely accepted that inorganic chemistry was "harder" because of the above.