This past weekend I read Andy Weir’s The Martian. I had seen the movie back when it was released in cinemas and enjoyed it immensely. Friends who had read the book encouraged me to do so. I’m pleased to say I enjoyed the book and the wry humor of the protagonist (not as prominent in the movie). I also found that visual images of the movie would flash in my mind as I was reading certain passages. It’s not often that I read something after I’ve watched it, so it was an interesting experience. Reading the book made me wonder if I could teach an interdisciplinary course such as “Life on Mars”. What would it cover? What other interdisciplinary courses would I enjoy putting together? And how would my chemical expertise flavor these courses?
Life on Mars. I envision two halves to a course aimed at the introductory level. We would look at the future of how to make Mars habitable. We would also look at the past, as exemplified by the present search for biosignatures of past life on Mars. I keep up with the news for signs of Martian life, not just in the popular media, but I also get digest alerts on relevant astrobiology articles. There’s plenty of chemical analysis involved in determining signs of life, and I can bring my knowledge in chemical origins of life research to illuminate class discussions. I’m not as well-versed in humans surviving and thriving on Mars beyond sci-fi portrayals, but I think there’s much we can discuss about the technologies needed to live on Mars. New composite materials will be in demand, and we’ll need advanced chemical methods for catalysis, separation, sensors, energy storage/transduction, and more. I haven’t even touched on a wide range of biochemical advances. Besides The Martian, I think students would get a hoot from reading Packing for Mars by Mary Roach.
Catalysis. My graduate work was in heterogeneous catalysis related to fuel cells. I then picked up projects on homogeneous transition-metal catalysis. My interests in the origin of life have led me to read and think hard about biocatalysis and organocatalysis (metal-free). And in my present research I’m wrestling with autocatalytic systems. Chemistry is at the heart of catalysis and there are many examples to choose from. The challenge with this course, unlike Life on Mars, is that I’m finding it hard envisioning how to do this well at an introductory level if the students haven’t had college-level general chemistry and at least a little organic chemistry. Opportunities to teach upper division special topics courses at a liberal arts college don’t come often (because we have to spend most of our time teaching core courses and we have to run lean) and the more prerequisites you have, the fewer students you attract. I need to get over my overly-narrow vision and spend a bit more time thinking of how this can be done at an introductory level and how to attract non-science majors.
Genetic Codes. I think students would find this intriguing. Okay, I find it intriguing and sometimes I project it on to what students may or may not think. We could discuss what information is, the advantages/disadvantages of analog and digital information, how information is transmitted, what constitutes a code, why we have genes, and how the present genetic code may have evolved to its present-day use in extant life. We could even discuss the development and use of genetic algorithms. There will be a good mix of biology, chemistry, information science, and computational thinking. I’ve been teaching myself cheminformatics and read almost all the key literature about how the present genetic code may have evolved from simpler, messier systems. (In case you were wondering, there are still many unanswered questions and controversy about the evolutionary process, which keeps the topic fresh and interesting.)
Next semester, I get to teach a special topics course that I’ve titled “Metals in Biochemistry” to keep it vague and to attract biochemistry majors, many of whom may not have taken inorganic chemistry (but would garner value from learning a little more). I haven’t started working on the syllabus yet, but it will be aimed at upper division students who have either taken or are co-enrolled in first-semester biochemistry (i.e., they’ve had all of G-Chem and O-Chem). I’m sure origin of life and catalysis questions will feature in this course since I’m hoping to aim at the fundamental chemistry and get students to think about general principles amidst the seemingly idiosyncratic behavior of different metals. It sounds like a bio-inorganic course (which I’ve never taken) but I will be aiming more at fundamentals and theory than a descriptive survey. In my mind I’m doing something interdisciplinary, although it might not look that way from someone looking in from the outside.
To keep myself motivated, I am borrowing the DVD of The Martian so I can watch it again. Reading the book reminded me how much I had forgotten about the movie, and this time I can watch it with an eye for what scenes I might want to use for a class. Easier to use movie clips than asking students to read the book!
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