SellaTheChemist
Interesting view from Peter Atkins at the RSC Historial Group - don't tell students that there's a lot of hard maths in chemistry. He argues that there's not a lot of real mathematics. There are a lot of physical ideas that are underpinned quantitatively. Tell students instead to focus on the ideas, and that the maths is easy and will follow.
Lovely account of the growth of PChem in the last 50 years, in part illustrated by acronyms used in his textbooks. Fascinating.
Mar 10 at 2:59pmWeb
Show threadCedar Fen Farm Cedar Fen FarmMar 10

@sellathechemist

Well put.

Show threadSellaTheChemistMar 10
@oldoldcojote He's old, but he's still sharp as a tack.
Show threadHGourlayUCLMar 10
@sellathechemist Do you think the high school curriculum would do better to focus on concepts? Leave the maths to the maths teachers and programmes, and have chemistry (or in my case physics) teachers focus on the chemistry (or physics)? #chemistryeducation #physicseducation
Show threadSellaTheChemistMar 10
@HGourlayUCL I think one of the most important things we should resurrect and develop is the idea of solving problems by estimation; the Fermi approach. It is a skill for life that needs to sit alongside making up solutions and concentrations.
It's not very sexy but you can take articles out of the newspaper every day and try to make sense of chemistry, physics and more just by running some arithmetic and powers of ten.
Accuracy and precision can then follow further down the road.
Show threadMartin Vermeer FCDMar 11

@sellathechemist @HGourlayUCL This is true. And it protects you from dumb mistakes. Like, my students doing the Eratosthenes thing and finding the radius of the Earth is 6000 m...

Or, this

https://fediscience.org/@martinvermeer/116192911250750242

Show threadHGourlayUCLMar 11
@martinvermeer @sellathechemist Yes, or a close member of my family calculating that a satellite was in orbit at a height burrowing just below the Earth's surface.
Show threadSellaTheChemistMar 11
@HGourlayUCL @martinvermeer Maybe they were thinking of Elon Musk's mole of satellites.
Show threadMartin Vermeer FCDMar 11
@sellathechemist @HGourlayUCL But seriously, in aerial mapping I have run into the situation where there are two solutions for the location of the mapping aircraft that the iterative (gradient descent) solving of the observation equations converges to, where one of them is underground. One should be able to notice that and choose only the physically realistic alternative...
Show threadSellaTheChemistMar 11
@martinvermeer @HGourlayUCL I do four workshops with life science students on estimation. Some love it. Some absolutely hate the fact that I don't really care what the "right answer" is and cannot get their head round the idea that it's an approach, a process, not a result.
Maybe they'll thank me 10 years from now.
Show threadSellaTheChemistMar 11
@HGourlayUCL @martinvermeer But jsut to continue with this thought, there is so much confusion over significant figures. Schools need to get a grip on this because different subjects/boards put the focus on sig figs or decimal places. Many teachers too are not confident about this, in my view, or rather the deeper meaning of the digits quoted.
These are crucial components of critical thinking that need to be built in very early and not left for university teachers to sort out.
Show threadHGourlayUCLMar 11
@sellathechemist @martinvermeer Experience from school suggests that even where teachers are confident, there's sometimes a 'receptiveness' barrier with students. In one school a student regularly referred to my 'obsession with significant figures' and did not act on advice!
Show threadSellaTheChemistMar 11
@HGourlayUCL @martinvermeer Yes. I get that and that is because there is little joining of the dots at exam board level. Physics, chemistry and maths all seem to do things slightly different. Maths focuses on decimal places all the time while SF are never properly grounded in the sense of confidence - how much money/chocolate would you bet on the last, the penultimate, the penpenultimate, and so on, figures being correct!
I worry that it's a zombie problem that will keep recurring… 
Show threadHGourlayUCLMar 11
@sellathechemist @martinvermeer I think there are two ideas coming up in this discussion. One is about having a feel for the approximate size of the value calculated. Does this seem about the right size? The second is about certainty/uncertainty. How sure can we be that this value is correct?
Show threadSellaTheChemistMar 12
1/ @HGourlayUCL @martinvermeer You've hit on the head one of the things I puzzled with for a long time. How to devise a practical that had "epistemic doubt/uncertainty" (to be as pompous as possible 😉) built into it. For a long time the response from people was "how will you mark it?" because we assessment looms so large in our thinking these days (KPIs, innit!). It puts the focus on the numerical value of the answer in a perverse and binary way (right vs wrong).
Show threadGeoff 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿Mar 12
@sellathechemist @HGourlayUCL @martinvermeer I have senior (~17yo) students help out with my technicianing. I always encourage them to have a rough idea of the result before they calculate. "Dilute this 3.85M acid down to 1.2M. Well, that's basically 4M down to 1M, so we know it should be in the 25% ballpark." Catches so many order of magnitude slips etc.
I also tell them that being 10/100/1,000 out is great, there's probably a simple decimal place error. There always is.
Show threadDr Susi ArnottMar 12
@sellathechemist @HGourlayUCL
Had an 'orders of magnitude' exercise in my #carbonliteracy courses for just this reason (didn't call it that! But a shockingly useful recap of units, tens, hundreds and so forth in a picturecard sorting game:)
Show threadIan RobinsonMar 10
@sellathechemist Don't show them his Physical Chemistry textbook too early then! 😂
Show threadSellaTheChemistMar 10
@ianRobinson His textbook contains all the underpinnings, but his point was that teachers need to show students the wood before getting into the trees.
Show threadIan RobinsonMar 10
@sellathechemist Yeah. I was just being facetious.
Show threadSellaTheChemistMar 10

@ianRobinson Facetiouslessness always contains a solid kernel of truth.

I got totally mired in stat mech because I just couldn't get the big ideas. It was all detail, symbols and fractions and somehow what it was for seemed to pass me by. It makes me sad… 

Show threadJenn, blobby goblinMar 10
@sellathechemist this is what I used to tell students myself! "unless you are planning to do a PhD in pchem, most of the math you will end up using is basic algebra at the most. Don't stress about it." very good to see someone else (with more standing) saying it too. thanks for sharing!
Show threadEgon Willigh☮gen 🟥Mar 10
@sellathechemist still have his book(s) at home
Show threadSellaTheChemistMar 10
@egonw I stupidly forgot to bring my copy of his Quanta that my dad gave me at age 18 or 19 for him to sign.
Show threadEgon Willigh☮gen 🟥Mar 10
@sellathechemist oh, that have been me!