Tag: science

Though I strive for increasing simplicities,
Class preps melt into muddled cyclicities.  
Here in Fall 2020,
There’s effort a-plenty
In balancing Chem’s synchronicities. 

This non-Twitter poem is not so much intended to elucidate any aspect of STEM education as to acknowledge this challenging autumn for faculty and students alike, here in the middle of the fall semester.   

“Though I strive for increasing simplicities, /
Class preps melt into muddled cyclicities.”
I’ve spoken with a few of my colleagues about how much the 2020-21 academic year reminds us of our respective first years on the tenure track.  It is a major shift to go from the research focus of postdoctoral work into full-time “class prep”: generating sets of notes with which to stay at least a day (or at least a few hours!) ahead of the class sessions that require those resources.  Since real-time teaching itself– organizing lectures, grading assessments, etc.– easily constitutes the substance of a normal work week, any term a professor has a completely new course is notable for the additional work it involves.  

The poem’s first two lines acknowledge that, although I attempted over the summer to prepare, it wasn’t fully possible.  Thus, recently, time has seemed to “melt into muddled cyclicit[y],” as it did a decade ago, when I began my teaching work; it’s easy to lose track of the days, moving through this befuddling term!  

“Here in Fall 2020, /
There’s effort a-plenty /
In balancing Chem’s synchronicities.”          
Teaching is very rewarding, but it’s also considerably time-consuming this autumn, mainly because I’ve been learning best practices pertaining to remote classrooms.  “Balancing Chem’s synchronicities” is a shorthand for those daily routines: preparing coherent lecture outlines and videos to be available asynchronously; maintaining synchronous classroom sessions, so that students and I can discuss questions on useful timescales. (I’ve been most fortunate to work with wonderful classes and colleagues; as I predicted in Week 1, the “effort a-plenty” is a shared endeavor throughout the department and across campus.)    

In Intro Chem, texts can fight focus.
But chemists themselves oft convoke; thus
For study sans rancor, 
See concepts that anchor
And for big ideas, central locus.  

This non-Twitter, STEM-education-themed poem addresses the sheer volume of material in an introductory chemistry textbook and one interesting set of disciplinary resources that students may find helpful in organizing their approaches to that material.  

“In Intro Chem, texts can fight focus.”
An introductory chemistry course shifts between vastly different subjects on a weekly basis.  Chemistry textbooks, while wonderful and creative resources, can seem overwhelming with the breadth of their coverage, as a student attempts to find key themes to emphasize in studying.  

“But chemists themselves oft convoke…”
The second line introduces a chemistry-education-related project that the American Chemical Society’s Division of Chemical Education has developed in the past decade.  This project is not itself reported in a chemistry textbook but, as part of the scientific literature, has been published in journal articles and communicated at conference presentations.   This is acknowledged poetically via “chemists themselves oft convoke”: the substance of this project arises from disciplinary meetings and related written communication.    

“…thus/ For study sans rancor, /
See concepts that anchor /
And for big ideas, central locus.”  
The Anchoring Concepts Content Maps are resources that outline key themes for different subdisciplines of chemistry.  For instance, authors Thomas Holme, Cynthia Luxford, and Kristen Murphy have published the General Chemistry Concept Map, highlighting major ideas around which the content of a yearlong introductory chemistry sequence centers.  While the resources are described at the pertinent link for chemistry teachers, I have seen that students likewise find these resources useful, especially in approaching final exams.        

The language in lines 3-5 becomes a bit strained.  However, “study sans rancor… [through] concepts that anchor” is intended to say that these resources lead to a less stressful learning process!  Likewise, these content maps provide a useful “central locus”: a single place in which to find many key ideas of chemistry.      

“The Alphabet” and “Twinkle, Twinkle,
Little Star” share a melody single.  
The tunes are the same,
But when just naming names,
Common content can be tough to signal!    

This non-Twitter poem highlights an interesting challenge of communicating in scientific disciplines; this challenge certainly extends to introductory science courses.  

“The Alphabet” and “Twinkle, Twinkle, /
Little Star” share a melody single.  
Several childhood songs, including the alphabet song (a.k.a. “now I know my ABCs”), “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star,” and others, have the same melody. However, that often is not obvious until one hums each tune to oneself. These initial two lines are rhythmically awkward, but they succinctly introduce a point that can resonate in a more complex context: during a STEM student’s undergraduate path, they often encounter common concepts in multiple courses.  

The tunes are the same, /
But when just naming names, /
Common content can be tough to signal!   
I remember one hallway conversation with a colleague teaching in a different STEM discipline; we were discussing the fact that thermodynamics had recently come up in both of our courses, but it was difficult for students taking both to transfer concepts and calculations between the two disciplinary presentations.  It didn’t take much time to identify the reason why. 

If we think about the process of heating a sample of water through all three of its phases, from solid ice to liquid water to gaseous steam, that process involves two “phase changes,” one from solid to liquid and one from liquid to gas.  At each of these, some heat energy is necessary to cause the phase change itself.  For instance, depending on sample size, it takes a certain amount of heat energy transferred at constant pressure to cause ice to melt to water: this was a concept that had recently come up in both my and my colleague’s courses. However, we soon realized that while I was discussing it in class as the enthalpy of that melting step, my colleague referred to it as the latent heat.  We each had learned the other term at some point, but it still took us a few seconds to recalibrate our discussion; we realized that students were likely hearing each unusual term as its own unusual concept, even with such an everyday process as the melting of ice.  

To directly link this anecdote to the limerick: the “melody” here is the familiar idea that melting ice to form water requires an input of heat energy at constant pressure.  However, that’s not immediately evident when “naming names” and learning the disciplinary vocabulary: the “common content” is challenging to realize. 

Different scientific disciplines require their own complicated disciplinary jargons for efficient communication among their specialists.  This can create quite a hurdle for novice learners, who often must take more than one introductory STEM course at once.  As with so many of these essays, my hope is that being aware of that obstacle might provide an important step towards navigating it.   

I will end here with a wonderful quotation from renowned organic chemist Percy Julian, whose words bring the essay to a close with a focus on another childhood rhyme.   

“I don’t want to frighten those of you who are not familiar with organic chemistry. I should have said in the beginning that one hardly expects an organic chemist to be able to speak without his gobbledygook in his language. As a matter of fact, one hardly expects a scientist to speak without that, and therefore scientists are usually and traditionally poor speakers, I warn you… The late Sir J. B. S. Haldane, the great biologist, put it rather aptly when he said that our language doesn’t lend itself to poetry. ‘Ladybird, ladybird fly away home’ becomes impossible when you must call the ladybird Coccinella bipunctata.”

Dr. Percy Julian, quoted in “Forgotten Genius,” NOVA

“A lab notebook stands written sentry
Over data advanced, element’ry.
When the record is clear,
Future readers adhere,
To repeat work outlined in past entries.”

Revisiting the 30 September 2019 Twitter limerick through the lens of the STEM education-themed poems provides an opportunity to emphasize the lab notebook as an educational tool.

“A lab notebook stands written sentry /
Over data advanced, element’ry.”
Keeping a clear record of experimental data in a lab notebook is a learning objective in most undergraduate laboratories, from first-year introductory chemistry courses through upper-level majors’ courses.  These notebooks thus stand guard over data ranging from elementary to advanced.           

“When the record is clear, /
Future readers adhere, /
To repeat work outlined in past entries.”
Writing a lab notebook entry is a task for which there is no single “correct” approach.  However, a complete entry typically includes the following: a statement of purpose; information on amounts of reagents used and the procedures completed; the data collected; at least one sample calculation for each result; and a brief conclusion statement.  Data should be recorded in ink, and errors should be crossed out only with a single line apiece, so that the entire procedural record can be observed and understood.  I generally remind my students to write at a level of detail enabling a “future reader” (another chemist) to pick up the notebook and repeat the entire procedure from the “past entr[y].”

Since beginning my teaching work, I have been interested in revisiting lab notebook assignments as  writing-to-learn techniques.  I have asked students to turn in scanned pages from their first experiment for comments only: a “low-stakes” formative assessment, long before the lab notebook is graded at the close of the semester for a significant portion of the grade, in the traditional, “high-stakes” summative assessment.  More recently, I have been interested to learn further about writing across the curriculum initiatives in STEM. Writing and learning in chemistry are both iterative processes that can reinforce one another. 

“Committee work kicks off this week,
The third of fall semester.
The aim for each: a functional group!
À la the ketone, ester—
Will set structures henceforth guide us,
How in meetings we’ll react?
(This imagery is shaky,
But the rhyme scheme is intact.)”

This past Twitter poem lines up with the current prose here in an intriguing way, as this is Week 3 of the current semester, Fall 2020.  This verse compares a common organic chemistry definition– “functional group”– to the everyday meaning of such a phrase. 

While this essay doesn’t examine an aspect of chemical education directly, in the same way most of the other STEM education poems have, it centers on an aspect of a faculty member’s schedule that may not be immediately evident to students and that may be thus useful to highlight. In particular, faculty members specifically reserve office hours to ensure that they have time available for student questions outside of class: otherwise, committee meetings and other service work can quickly overwhelm the calendar.

“Committee work kicks off this week, /
The third of fall semester…”
Generally speaking (in Fall 2019, for instance), the first two weeks of a fall semester are relatively slow in terms of service: the necessary committee work with respect to guiding a university’s curriculum and other important topics.  These tasks supplement a faculty member’s teaching and research.  (These lines don’t apply as well in this unusual autumn, when many meetings have been occurring all summer.)   

“The aim for each: a functional group!”
The third line of this poem introduces what will be revealed as a chemistry pun.  Certainly, one central goal for any committee is being a group that functions well.  

“À la the ketone, ester….”
The fourth line highlights the chemistry-specific meaning of “functional group.”  In organic chemistry, a functional group is a characteristic group of atoms that defines the function of a molecule.  For instance, if a molecule contains an oxygen atom bonded to a hydrogen atom (this is a pattern abbreviated as “R-OH”), it is said to contain an alcohol functional group, and chemists thus know that this molecule will undergo some established reaction pathways.  Two other common functional groups that fit particularly well in this rhyme scheme are ketones and esters.  

“Will set structures henceforth guide us, /
How in meetings we’ll react?”
Lines five and six make the comparison between the chemistry definition and everyday definition explicit: will the structure of a campus committee inform how it functions?  

“(This imagery is shaky,
But the rhyme scheme is intact.)”
The closing lines emphasize that the two definitions don’t truly overlap: work accomplished by a committee will always be far less predictable than the reactions available to organic molecules!