Magical Potions and How to Design Them

If you want to bring course material to life, it’s difficult for a chemist to compete with a biologist. Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them could well be the title of a course at Hogwarts taught by Newt Scamander (a Hufflepuff!). Not only could students use his tome as a textbook, they could enter his magical menagerie through his suitcase. It’s unfortunate that Care of Magical Creatures isn’t as well taught when Harry Potter and friends are in school. (No offense to Hagrid who is knowledgeable but quite the novice at teaching).

I watched Fantastic Beasts this weekend. The story and visuals are entertaining, and Eddie Redmayne does a superb job at portraying the young Scamander. He loves his magical creatures and fantastic beasts, and takes great pains to care for them to the best of his ability. It is interesting to watch a Wizarding World movie that did not come from the narrative of a book (although very loosely based off a book without said narrative). The story is tight and well-written for the pace of a two-hour “action” movie that shows off its seamlessly integrated CGI. The beasts are very interesting, and I wish I knew a bit more about them. (I suppose that’s what the book is for!) Watching the niffler in action illustrates how much havoc a loose one would cause in Hogwarts. The weakest parts of the movie were the allusions trying to connect Grindelwald into the story (they felt a little forced). In contrast, the theory of the Obscura, an elaboration from an issue that comes up also in Book 7, was quite interesting.

If Potions students weren’t so afraid of Snape and his dastardly reputation, he might have actually taught an intriguing class. In Book 1, his first-day of class introduction to the topic is well done (in my opinion), and so is Slughorn’s in Book 6. These experienced teachers know how to introduce their subject matter! Unfortunately Snape and Slughorn have serious character flaws; like us Muggle (or No-Maj) teachers, they are only too human. If I was Potions master, perhaps the best tagline I could come up with for my class would be Magical Potions and How to Design Them. I might even author this book someday, although it’s doubtful that Hufflepuff Hippo could ever compete with Scamander’s popularity.

All this made me think about my non-majors chemistry class next semester. Officially it is called Chemistry and Society, a rather generic name. I was originally going to subtitle it Potions for Muggles, but I now rather like the sound of Magical Potions and How to Design Them. We’ll cover plenty of standard chemistry – molecules, chemical bonds, and different types of chemical reactions. Intermolecular forces will be utilized to discuss drug design, i.e., I will have to move my organic chemistry subunit much earlier in the semester so we can discuss some rudimentary biochemistry and the “molecules of life”. I might have to truncate my earlier idea of starting the class with the interaction of light, energy and matter that would form a basis of magic. I think I will still ask the students to recommend potions they would like to make (if they could), and have the class final projects be the design of the proposed potions. If I get the list earlier in the semester, I can scaffold the projects by sprinkling the course material and discussions around the proposed potions.

Watching the movie also made me think about cryptozoology, the study of fantastic beasts. The Loch Ness and the Yeti are two familiar examples that hold much fascination for many. Could unicorns exist? Were there dragons? Folks in the ancient world were just as intrigued by fantastic beasts. What else is there in the depths of the ocean that we have not yet encountered? The invention of the microscope brought the microbia to our attention – hidden in plain sight, but too small for us to see with the naked eye. And it was shocking to the scientists who first discovered that we all contain multitudes!

Anton van Leeuwenhoek, inventor of the best microscopes of his day, was very secretive about how his lenses were designed. There was an element of “hiddenness” to his newfound knowledge and access to the microscopic world. Likewise, the alchemists of old, trying to make the philosopher’s stone, guarded their secrets closely. I could call them cryptochemists, perhaps. Since my Chemistry and Society course also serves as an introduction to the “scientific method”, I have tried to include examples where we try to distinguish science from pseudoscience. This seems like a good opportunity to incorporate the two historical vignettes surrounding “hiddenness” and discuss the interaction between science and magic both in the past, but also today – where extravagant claims of extrasensory perception and other types of ‘magic’ continue to enchant many twenty-first century folks.

Okay, I now have a course subtitle and a general course plan. Now I just need to flesh out the details. But first, I should concentrate on ending this semester well!