The Failures of the School Systems Pt. 2: "Wait, we actually have to help our children learn?"

     Holy shit, I'm actually posting on this thing for once in over a month and a half. That's what happens when your a chemistry major with a penchant for getting into more things than you have time for. And also yes, I just ended that sentence with a preposition. I know it's bad, but I don't really care about that rule anyways.You know why? Because I wasn't taught that rule until around junior year in high school. That puts it right next to the semicolon, which I've learned more about from the internet than from academia.

     Almost 2 months ago, I wrote a little rant about how the public school system sucks at teaching chemistry. Then, about a week or so ago, I stumbled on this article by Bill Maher (who, by the way, is really amusing as long as you have liberal sensibilities and can look past the sexism) about why the teachers are not the main problem with the American school system. That, combined with a few polls about the current popular (if unnecessarily controversial) scientific topics, children's TV habits, a look at some of the ridiculous things that children are exposed to outside of school, and a chapter about development for my Foundations of Psychology course, has lead me to agree with him. While not all of the blame can be pinned on them, parents are the #1 driving force behind children learning and doing well in school.

     I admit, I was lucky when it came to my academic upraising. When I was about 4 years old, I became interested in being a "dolphin scientist". Later I learned that it was called a marine biologist, but that's besides the point. My parents quickly found out (probably because I told them) and jumped at the opportunity that it presented. For the next 14 years, I was practically inundated with books, newspaper articles, and toys that kept my interest in science. But even more importantly, I was always finding their mouths at my ears, whispering that to be a scientist I need to do well in school so I can get into a good college, as well as often finding their feet at my back, ready to kick me for not keeping up with my school work. While I can understand the need for many families to have both parents working while having relatively young children, I was fortunate enough to have my mother home most of my early childhood, making me do my homework and kicking me off of the Game Cube, computer, and other video game systems that I had (kicking me off of my Game Boy, however, was rarely successful). Also, I'm fairly certain that one of the reasons why my parents yelled at (and often punished) my brother for doing poorly in school was to encourage me not to make the same mistakes. And now I'm sitting here, going to the 80th best school in the nation and looking towards a relatively good future (Don't ask where marine biology went, that's a story in itself).

     The problem is, not every parent does that. In the age of the internet, corporate control, and reality TV, parents are becoming less active in their child's learning. Books are being supplanted by video games and TV, athletics (although I've never been athletic, that is due to medical reasons and I realize the importance of good early-age athletic programs) are being supplanted by crappy franchised sport video games and TV, and good old-fashioned parental interaction is being replaced by, you guessed it, TV. In an age where the television showcases talentless people singing, the rich scum of the earth, and idiots with chalk boards crying about the state of America, the emphasis that is placed on TV vastly overshadows the emphasis placed on books in both modern society and in many homes. Studies have shown that children who grow up reading are more likely to do better in school, yet more and more children are being raised on TV, which has no intellectual additive properties. And yet, when their children do poorly in school, they blame the teachers. Parents blaming other things for their own failings. Sound familiar (*cough* video games *cough*)?

     When you decide to actually have your own child, do them a favor. Limit their TV, build a personal library, and spend some goddamn time with them.

Keep Thinking

The Failures of the School Systems Pt. 1

Chemistry.

     Ask people what their favorite class in high school was, and chances are you will not find someone who will say that their favorite was their chemistry class. Granted, chances are their favorite class will either be what they majored in, closely linked to their major, or an art/music/theater class that they realized would not support them after college. Still, very few people actually like chemistry.

Why is that?

     If you look at the numbers, chemistry is a very lucrative field. In industry, starting salary for a chemist with a master's degree is 70k. A bachelor's degree in chemistry has the second highest average starting salary, with chemical engineering being the highest.

     Chemistry is also the basis of pretty much everything in the life sciences, and the knowledge from chemistry, specifically analytical chemistry, is very much a part of a number of branches of physics, especially astronomy. Chemists are the reason why we have plastics, medicines, fuel sources, and countless other things that we take for granted in modern life.

So why does everyone groan when you bring a chemistry metaphor into everyday speech?

     Aside from the obvious nerdiness of using science in everyday speech, people don't like chemistry. And I blame that almost completely on our school systems, and how we go about teaching it..

     Imagine you're back in 7th grade science. Your teacher has said that he will now be starting a unit on elements and atoms (aka: the basis of chemistry). He shows you the periodic table, points out a few key elements such as hydrogen, carbon, oxygen, and gold, explains what all those weird 1-2 letter symbols and numbers with ridiculously long decimals are, and then pulls out a diagram of the atom which looks like this:

He explains what everything is, explains what protons, neutrons, and electrons are, possibly mentions the atomic theories that came before it (including that this is called the Bohr model), and gives you a worksheet about everything he's taught. Maybe he even assigns a project where you create a model of a large atom. Then, at the end of the unit, he briefly glides over the fact that this model is, in fact, almost completely wrong and that there is a new model, then starts something new before you have a chance to ask any questions about it.

     Now imagine that you're in your high school chemistry class. The second day of class, your teacher says "You all know about the Bohr model, right? Well, it's completely wrong. Electrons don't follow perfectly circular paths. In fact, we can't even tell where they are and what they are doing at the same time. However, we can guess that they're somewhere in here. She then pulls up a diagram which looks like this

Now you have to spend time forgetting the Bohr model and start learning this new model (Electron Cloud). All that time you spent in 7th grade learning the Bohr model, including making that model of Uranium out of a Styrofoam ball, large wooden beads, a dowel,and 12 gauge steel wire, was absolutely wasted. And you know it.

Strike one

     Now that you're slightly unhappy about this, your teacher then makes it worse. When you're talking about thermodynamics, she puts a few equations on the board and tells you to memorize them. However, she knows that you aren't going to do that without some forcing. Therefore, she assigns 25 questions a night for 2 weeks, all of them having to do with those same few equations. To make things worse, she automatically assumes that you did horrible in algebra and therefore makes you write out every single step that you take to isolate the variable that you're finding before plugging in any value, thus turning a 30 minute homework assignment into a 2 hour homework assignment.

Strike two

     Finally you get to do some labs. You go in thinking that this is your chance to wear fancy coats, handle dangerous acids, and explode things. Because, you know, that's what chemists do in the movies.

     You walk into the lab, and there's a few small pieces of metals, each a different shade of grey, as well as some little platters with piles that all look like salt and a few beakers. Your teacher says to dissolve the different piles into different beakers of water and add the chunks of metal to the beakers once everything's fully dissolved, and look for signs of reactions. "What are should we look for? The metal disappearing? The solution changing color? Explosions?" you ask. "Look for bubbles"

Bubbles

     First you don't get a fancy lab coat (and those goggles that you have to wear will not stop fogging up), then you're handling boring materials, and now you're looking for goddamn bubbles. To top it all off, she makes you write a 3 page report on exactly what produced those bubbles and why.

Strike three. Chemistry sucks.

     Now you know some of the major problems with the way we teach our kids chemistry. If we are going to make chemistry fun and exciting, we need to have our teachers stop focusing on concepts that are either completely outdated or just plain wrong, stop inundating the students with stupid exercises in algebra (that's what math classes are for), and actually do some interesting labs without such a focus on the report. Chances are, if they go into sciences then they won't be doing the same format as teachers want them to write in, and if they don't then they won't be writing a lab report to begin with. Who knows? Maybe people would actually start to like chemistry again.

Keep thinking.

Credits:

http://www.hsctut.materials.unsw.edu.au/Bonding/Images/Bohr%20Atom.png

http://www.agen.ufl.edu/~chyn/age2062/OnLineBiology/OLBB/www.emc.maricopa.edu/faculty/farabee/BIOBK/orbitals.gif 

The Cocaine on Your Money

I was sitting in my Bioanalytical Chemistry class today, listening to the professor talk about various different recent public concerns that involved analytical chemistry, when she brought up an interesting study. Approximately 95% of all US currency has trace amounts of cocaine on it. No, there's no chance of you getting high from snorting your $20s, but it is there. The average dollar bill has 29 micrograms of cocaine (10^6 micrograms = 1 gram) on it, with the highest amount measured being about 1mg on a single dollar bill.

That got me thinking

Beyond the idea that I got that I'm not going to share online because of the potential that it has, I started to wonder exactly how much money would it take to get 1 kilo of cocaine off of $1 bills (quick note: I am most certainly not a drug user. I was wondering about it for purely academic reasons). The math is as follows:

Variable: X = amount of $1 bills

(X)(29ug)(1Kg/10^9ug)(95%) = 1Kg

For you math-illiterate people, that's amount of $1 bills times 29 micrograms times the conversion factor for micrograms to kilograms times 95%. Do the math out and that yields approximately $36,297,641

Damn, that's a lot of money.

To give you perspective, according to this article (http://www.ice.gov/pi/news/newsreleases/articles/071221sanjuan.htm) the street value of 1 kilo of cocaine is $23,250. That means for the amount of money it takes get 1 kilo of cocaine (not including the extraction and purification processes) you can get about 1560 kilos.

The moral of the story? Don't try to use cocaine on money to get high. It's not cost effective.

Keep thinking.

The Beginning of a Stream of Thought

Well, here it is. I've been meaning to do this for quite a while, and now I've done it.

Now I bet you're all wondering "What's 'It'? And for that matter, who are you?". Well, that's a great question! First of all, I am Peter Edwards. I am an undergraduate student studying chemistry at Northeastern University, and I have a mind that can be often described as nearly hyperactive. That doesn't mean that I have attention problems, it just means that I'm constantly thinking of something. Which brings me to "It". "It" is the collection of my random thoughts. All of the philosophical questions, opinions on world events, the occasional musical outburst, and, of course, mindless chemical ideas.

This is not meant to be professional in any way, nor should you take what I say for granted. One of my core beliefs in life is that everything must be taken with at least grain of salt. If I am blogging about something that you know nothing about, then by all means do not let me be your sole source of information. While I sure hope that I know what I'm talking about, much of what I come up with that isn't an opinion or recollection is stuff that I think through by myself, and is by no means academically sound. And everything that I do that creates academically sound information and data will not be directly posted here, due to the fact that I actually plan on publishing stuff eventually. This is simply my thoughts.

With that, I hope to update at least once a week. Let's see how well that works out.

Keep thinking.