Molecular Me

Imagine you are the size of a molecule. Surrounded by many other molecules. What is happening to you and around you?

Before each class, I put up an ‘opening slide’. Students arriving early can ponder something amusing or interesting related to the topic of the day. Yesterday we started Kinetics in my General Chemistry II course. Here’s my opening slide.

My flash of inspiration came 30 minutes before class when I decided to add a small headshot of my younger self to a molecule and label it Molecular-Me! Students who came to class early thought this was funny and we had some good discussion about teaching and learning chemistry for a few minutes before class officially started. I’ve continued to take advantage of my Fifteen Minutes Before Class, at least for the 8am class when there isn’t a class occupying the room beforehand.

I always try to encourage my students to think at the atomistic and molecular level in our class discussions and in my office. That’s the length-scale where chemistry takes place – breaking and making chemical bonds! However, I had not taken the further step of asking students to imagine they were molecules. Two weeks ago, a concrete idea was floated by one of my research students in my creative cluster working on designing creative assignments in General Chemistry. She chose to work on the Photoelectric Effect and mocked up an assignment where students imagined they were different atomistic components in the experiment: an electron, a photon, or a metal atom. What would they experience? What would their neighbors be doing? She “did” her own assignment and came up with an imaginative story involving running from the rain. We might turn it into a video, so stay tuned.

Another inspiration came from watching a preview of Ant-Man and the Wasp when I was at the cinema to watch Black Panther. Just think: If we had the technology to miniaturize ourselves to the size of molecules, we might visualize chemical interactions in a new way! Another of my students has been working on connecting topics in General Chemistry to what astronaut observers might see as they traverse the universe and different planets. When I suggested a miniaturization approach, the students started telling me about watching The Magic School Bus as kids, and we got excited about what chemistry we might see along the way if we had the equivalent magic.

A Shrinking Spell, perhaps? Reducio! Actually, that should be a very difficult spell to cast, as would its counterpart Engorgio! Resizing could wreak havoc on interactions between particles unless ‘universal’ constants also changed proportionally and locally to the resized object. If the sizes of two objects got smaller, would their masses decrease proportionally? (I expect their distances to decrease proportionally.) If so, would the density change? In Coulomb’s Law, would charges change in magnitude? (Charge seems to be a label, that isn’t related to size.) Would the permittivity of free space change? Would electrostatic interactions strengthen or weaken? Hmm… that’s something else I should ponder further. Magic can wreak such havoc on the physical world if not used carefully. That’s why we have Hogwarts – to train young wizards and witches to use magic responsibly and be aware of the dangers of spells with unintended consequences. As the characters in Once Upon A Time learn, “magic comes with a price”.

Analogies have their limits. While asking students to imagine themselves as molecules may enlighten them as they traverse conceptual challenging topics, it may also lead to false notions. Part of my time as an instructor, I teach things that are new. Sometimes I reinforce something the student already knows. However, a chunk of the time is spent attempting to overturn misconceptions. Some of these are deeply lodged and the student has to struggle through this. So while I’m excited about exciting my students’ imaginations in chemistry, I should be equally cautious in using these so-called ‘creative’ exercises. They need to be well-tailored to provide room for novel interpretative thinking, without themselves becoming a road to misinterpretations.

Talking about misinterpretations, here’s my opening slide for Monday’s class on the Integrated Rate Law in Kinetics. I’m looking forward to class!