Happy New Year!
This week I have been reading Richard Feynman’s The Character of Physical Law. The
book is a compilation of the Messenger Lectures given by Feynman at Cornell
University in 1964. Feynman started his academic career as a professor at
Cornell, and after five years there he moved to (my alma mater) Caltech. He is reknown
for being both an outstanding teacher and scientist. His lectures on physics are outstanding for their clarity.
Before delivering his first Messenger Lecture, Feynman was
introduced by Dale Corson, provost at Cornell. Besides the usual laudatory
remarks on Feynman’s achievements and some historical tidbits, Corson added
that “in the preface of the published lectures there is a picture of Feynman
performing happily on the bongo drums”. Feynman is a multi-talented colorful character
and his reminiscing is collected in a delightful series of essays published as Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman! Thus when
Feynman was introduced to a scientific audience, reference was often made to
his other pursuits and interests outside of physics.
After Corson’s introduction, Feynman began his first lecture
with the following bit of wit. “It is odd, but on the infrequent occasions when
I have been called upon in a formal place to play the bongo drums, the
introducer never seems to find it necessary to mention that I also do
theoretical physics. I believe that is probably because we respect the arts
more than the sciences.”
In my experience, I think it is not so much respect for the
arts, but rather fear of the sciences and its inaccessibility. When I meet
someone new, inevitably the “What do you do?” question comes up. Although I
usually tell folks that I “teach college students”, the follow-up question is
“What do you teach?” The most common responses to the revelation that I am a
chemist is “Oh, that was my worst subject in school” or “Wow, you must be
really smart” or “I once took a [science/math] class and I don’t think I
understood anything”. Scientists and teachers share part of this blame. Since I
count myself in both groups, I need to do my part in dispelling the notion that
science is inaccessibly difficult, or worse, dreadfully boring in its
esotericism.
As I have been planning the revamping of my General
Chemistry class next semester (see the open letter I wrote to my students), I have
been thinking about the broad sweep I would like to take. I am also trying to
work out some of the nitty-gritty details for the first several weeks of class.
I usually don’t bring work home with me on weekends, evenings or holidays. But
this time around, for the December holidays, I brought back my previous lecture
notes, assignments and exams, and the current textbook we are using. My plan
was to list the specific content learning goals of the course, and then figure
out a way to wrap things together so I can motivate the students appropriately.
I would like them to find this class interesting, engaging and challenging, and
that they would be motivated to do the appropriate pre and post class
assignments.
I have not gotten around to writing out anything other than
these blogs (as I’m still on holiday) but the thinking time has been useful.
Reading broadly over the holidays has also helped to shape how I would like the
class theme to unfold. Since the second semester of General Chemistry is mainly
about thermodynamics and equilibria (with some kinetics, electrochemistry and
colligative properties thrown into the mix), I think I will wrap my class around
the broad theme of Energy.
My plan is to start out with our sun as the energy source sustaining
the bioenergetics and activities of living creatures here on Earth. We might
lead off with nuclear energy (because nuclear chemistry gets short shrift in
the first semester – we cover radioactivity and balancing nuclear reactions but
don’t have time to go into the detailed energy considerations). Then we will pick up on thermochemistry
before moving on to electrochemistry. The role of catalysts and materials in
the harnessing and storage of energy (while battling entropy) both in man-made
devices and in living cells will hopefully feature prominently.
I might be over-ambitious but I would like students to get a
taste of two broad areas: (1) the “energy issues in today’s technological
society” and, (2) the riddle of how chemical energy was harnessed into
biological systems in the origin of life. (The latter was discussed briefly in
my post last week.) This way I have some open-ended speculative projects the
students can work on wherein they will learn a bunch of chemistry along the
way, but will also get a taste of what complex problems look like. The goal
isn’t to “solve” the complex problems but rather to learn how to approach them,
making use of what you know, learning some new things, and figuring out what
else you will need to learn (that you won’t have time to cover during the
semester). The projects should also be collaborative (no one person can figure
this out) and thus provide good training for the students to go out and solve real-world
complex problems in teams.
Where does Feynman’s book come in? Energy, it turns out, is
a very slippery topic for students. It is not easy to grasp and I’m pretty sure
my students (even though they’ve had first semester General Chemistry) are
still rather fuzzy on the concept. I thought Feynman did a great job
introducing Conservation Laws in Chapter 3 of The Character of Physical Law. In the letter to my students I told
them that I would like to expose them to outside reading material instead of
slavishly following the textbook. I’m therefore thinking of having them read
some selections from this chapter on Energy Conservation as their first pre-class
assignment. Feynman writes lucidly and I think it would be good for students to
be exposed to different teachers, many much better than me.
Towards the end of Chapter 5 (on entropy and
irreversibility), Feynman makes a claim in support the importance of having an
interdisciplinary “liberal arts” outlook in learning. Or at least he seems to
be trying to build a bridge between Snow’s two cultures. In contrasting
“humanities” level ideas such as evil, beauty, and hope, with fundamental
low-level “basic science” level ideas such as the fundamental laws of physics,
Feynman writes: “To get a deep understanding of the world with only [one level]
alone is a mistake. It is not sensible for the ones who specialize at one end,
and the ones who specialize at the other end, to have such disregard for each
other.” In fact it is the many “in between, connecting one step to another, …
working at the ends and working in the middle [to gradually understand] this
tremendous world of interconnected hierarchies.”
I hope that students in my class don’t just learn
fundamental concepts of chemistry, but because they have opted to have a
liberal arts education, that they will see the interconnections between
hierarchies in my class and in all their other classes.
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