Well, I try to keep a broad view of it, anyways, thanks
Yeah, you know, without context for chemistry, it's like, so what? I can buy a packet of color-changing koolaid powder and do that in the kitchen and have some delicious diabetes beverage to boot. I'll learn just about as much from the world as pouring crap from one vial to another without know what's in there or what's happening. It has to be both show AND tell, else it's meaningless.
The payoff for all of that stuff doesn't seem to happen at the basic general chemistry level too much. Organic was where it was at for me, although I did love my Gen Chem sequence. I got it a lot easier than Organic. Ochem's Molecular Orbital Theory stuff in particular is amazing, though. Suddenly, why do magnets work? Well, I can tell you. Things about energy and colors and reactivity, photons and electrons and woo, all sorts of junk. Great stuff
But no education is complete without liberal arts, either. I took a small pile of history and english courses. The art history courses I took were also some of my favorite lessons. The teacher liked to tease me for being "the science guy" amongst the art majors at first - until I started busting out my own acquired knowledge of history and art, both classical and modern, and did a sort of painting/sculpture for my final project. It wasn't earth-shatteringly good, but I think it was more than was expected from "that science guy". It's deadly important to understand history, as it tells us where we're coming from and can guide us in where to go (or not to go) next; art too, as it lets us express ourselves as we move along the way. I like that dumb bumper sticker that says "EARTH: Without art it's just eh". Too true.
Quote:
Originally Posted by ZenGum
Winslow, it is great that you have "got" the vision of modern science.
In case you missed it, check this link
http://htwins.net/scale2/
which is a zoomable depiction of the universe, from the tiniest scales (quantum foam) to the known (and indeed, estimated) universe.
In high school, they thought they would make chemistry fun by having us pour stuff from one test tube to another and see what happened, but not bothering us with any explanation of why. As a hard-core nerd, I'd been doing that since I was eight, and it had become boring, so I dropped chemistry.
I have come to regret that, especially when in the final year my friends who were doing chem all finally were given the explanation and everything they had done for the last two years finally made coherent sense.
Meanwhile, I was at Thermopylae with Leonidas, valuing honour more than life itself, giving those Persians what for. |