When Chemists Attack

Much to my parents’ dismay, when I was a small child, I was a an amateur chemist. Not having much in the way of chemical glassware, I would mix various things in the toilet to see what would happen. This, more often than not, produced amusing rather than toxic results. Amusing, that is, unless you were the one who had to clean up afterwards!

While I soon graduated to crystals in jars, ripping apart electronics, and putting them back together again (occasionally successfully), I eventually came back to chemistry and got a degree in it – then started teaching it.

Even in my youth, though, the chemistry set was on the decline (hence the reason for putting reagents into the big white bowl with convenient “waste disposal” lever). Too dangerous, they said. You can’t let kids play with magnesium ribbon! They could poke their eyes out! Or blow up the house! Or whatever the heck that stuff does …

So I have a certain affinity for household chemistry, and articles like this one in Wired disturb me. There’s a drive on – spurred by the unavoidable fact that chemicals can be dangerous coupled with the mad desire for protection from terrorism and drugs – to legislate the amateur chemist out of existence. The elimination of budding scientists might not be the intention of the criminalization of amateur science, but consider this: Almost everything that causes an interesting chemical effect can be dangerous. Take away everytihng that’s potentially dangerous and/or could potentially be used to make some kind of drug and you have … nothing.

Want proof? Take a look in the Wired article:

more than 30 states have passed laws to restrict sales of chemicals and lab equipment associated with meth production, which has resulted in a decline in domestic meth labs, but makes things daunting for an amateur chemist shopping for supplies. It is illegal in Texas, for example, to buy such basic labware as Erlenmeyer flasks or three-necked beakers without first registering with the state’s Department of Public Safety to declare that they will not be used to make drugs. Among the chemicals the Portland, Oregon, police department lists online as “commonly associated with meth labs” are such scientifically useful compounds as liquid iodine, isopropyl alcohol, sulfuric acid, and hydrogen peroxide, along with chemistry glassware and pH strips. Similar lists appear on hundreds of Web sites.

I’ve bolded the ridiculously common items here. Iodine, rubbing alcohol (isopropyl alcohol), and hydrogen peroxide can be found in most medicine cabinets. Got an aquarium or pool? You’ll need the pH strips. (Not mentioned on this list, but another household compound associated with meth is pseudoephedrine – found in Sudafed.)

Sulfuric acid’s one of the most common compounds in the world – you’ll find it in your car battery. And here’s a hint to overzealous legislators: Erlenmeyer flasks are not actually required to make drugs, but they sure do make simple kid-level experiments like titration of household vinegar easier.

So heaven help you if you have a car, a pool, an inquisitive kid, and a reasonably stocked medicine cabinet. You’re probably on someone’s watch list!

Many college-level science courses begin with what, for the students, should be a brief review of the basics of the scientific method. After all, without any hint of the method behind the science in a course, a science course becomes a jumble of facts to memorize and regurgitate on command.

Sometimes, though, these beginning exercises in the methods of science can turn into frustration for instructors, who have to wrestle with the deficiencies of students in other areas. In particular, many students aren’t able to separate needed information from unneeded information.

Here’s an example.

The assignment:

You wake up one morning to find the power is off in your home. There can be a number of reasons for no power…I’ll let your imagination run wild as to the other observations that you might make to help you figure out the cause. Formulate 1) a hypothesis and 2) a prediction based on your observations; post them as a reply to this message.

As you can see, this isn’t exactly a foreign situation to anyone who lives in a modern home with lights and electricity.

Here’s one of the responses:

I woke up late for work one morning because the alarm clock didn’t go off. When I looked at my cell phone to see the time, I immediatly jumped out of bed and threw the light switch up, no light. I went in the bathroom and threw that switch up, no light there either. The power was out. I do remember hearing thunder last night and I know that there were severe thunderstorm warnings and watches all around until late into the night. The storm must have caused there to be a power outage and the power company had not yet been notified. I quickly got dressed and flew out the house. On the way to work I called the power company to report the outage. Thank goodness for cell phones.

So what’s wrong with the response? Well, other than the fact that the imagery associated with the phrase “I went in the bathroom and threw that switch up” reminds me of the ipecac scene in an old episode of Family Guy, I don’t think the point of the assignment was to write a short essay in praise of the cellular phone. You could actually make a few hypotheses and predictions from what this student has written, but the student doesn’t actually point any of them out.

While this particular example isn’t from any of my classes, I do run into a lot of the same kinds of answers. Students have an inability to extract relevant information. It’s no wonder that these students have trouble with the sciences, where stripping away unimportant detail is fundamental to explaining why things work.

But why do students have these problems? Is it a lack of training in early years? (Is the problem-solving that students do in high school so contrived that students never have to actually think about details and whether they are important?) Is the “info dump” style of answering questions (as demonstrated above) rewarded somewhere along the line? (I’m thinking that partial credit might play a role here.)

Any ideas?