
Why introductory chemistry is boring: a long-term historical perspective - klevertree
https://get21stnight.com/2019/12/27/why-introductory-chemistry-is-boring-a-long-term-historical-perspective/
======
StillBored
You can replace chemistry with math in his article (and he sort of mentions
this in context near the end). I can't remember once being shown the physical
problems that drove progress in math until I reached calculus. I remember
being bored to tears in algebra 2, a class which was basically being taught as
linear algebra + trigonometry. It wasn't until the following summer that I
discovered 3d transforms, and a bunch of other applications of all that matrix
manipulation and how all the sin/cos manipulation helped with RF electronics.

Back 25 years ago I was convinced that that entire class could have been
taught as an extension of more concrete subjects (electronics, computer
graphics, signals, etc) that simply weren't taught in the high school I went
to, despite the fact it was what we now call a STEM magnet school. Classes I
later wished I could retake, if only to pick up on all the math subtleties I
mostly ignored because it all seemed so pointless.

Now that I have kids, I see that nothing has really changed. Sure they get a
lot of "word problems", but the problems are so artificial they might just be
worded as "what is the result of adding A and B and dividing by C" for all the
natural concepts they get across.

Thankfully I had a pretty reasonable chemistry teacher, who did a lot of demos
and gave us interresting experiments to keep the class from being a bunch of
random facts.

~~~
oefrha
> I can't remember once being shown the physical problems that drove progress
> in math until I reached calculus.

Progress in math often (or usually) isn’t driven by physical problems, so
there’s that. Just like progress in physics often (or usually) isn’t driven by
“real world” problems. Discoveries are often made before applications are
found.

As a concrete example, number theory is an incredibly profound and fruitful
branch of mathematics. It is also largely “useless” to this day (outside of
cryptography, which uses only a small subset of number theory, and isn’t
really “physical” to begin with).

Another well-known example is non-Euclidean geometry, which came into being
due to the purely intellectual pursuit of the Fifth Postulate, and almost
magically found its place in the theory of gravitation long afterwards.

It takes a certain kind of personality to enjoy mathematics as is, even if it
seems “useless”.

(Theoretical physicist who double majored in math and physics in college here.
Definitely possess the “certain kind of personality”.)

~~~
stefco_
> Progress in math often (or usually) isn’t driven by physical problems

This is true at the largest scale, but the math classes that most people take
are directly applicable to (and often were developed partly to solve) physical
problems. I, too, found the high school presentation of math dry and boring
until I took a good physics class, and I was amazed by how much of the math I
learned was directly useful for that subject.

Unfortunately, the dry treatment math gets in high schools also usually fails
to highlight the beauty and subtlety of pure math. I didn't realize how much I
loved pure math until I took my first proof-based analysis class after junior
year of college.

I think we're seriously failing both the applied and pure camps of students
with the way we currently present math. The fact that it took me till nearly
the end of college to really like it, despite my proclivity towards the
abstract and technical, really drove this point home for me.

~~~
Retric
Practical does not mean interesting. A lot of math is based around accounting
and taxes.

How big is this field and how do I split it evenly into N pieces. That’s more
or less why Geometry was considered foundational for so long. Carpenters are
often used as examples, but they generally avoid anything mathematically
complicated instead using simple rules.

------
bonoboTP
I always hated experiments in chemistry class, as it was always boring and
trivial. Kids who liked it, did so because it was a time to slack off, watch
colors change, play around with the props etc. It didn't help in understanding
anything and was as detached from the rest of the chemistry lessons as if it
was a subject to itself.

Interestingly, as a student I also disliked whenever the book went in the
direction that TFA recommends: explaining the experimental underpinnings of
theory. It always felt unsatisfactory, like a "God of gaps" argument. Whenever
the student was not ready to hear the detailed derivations from more basic
principles (advanced topics), the justification was just "experiments have
shown that [...]". Many times I found out there _are_ more basic underlying
reasons and felt cheated. I wanted to understand how the universe works, not
who discovered it and when.

My young self would think, leave me alone with pictures of dusty old books and
people with funny hair, I want to know how the universe is structured. We're
just a speck of dust in the grand scheme of the universe, I want to learn
about galaxies, planets, elements. These are what any objective observer, like
aliens, would care about, not the lives of some humans hundreds of years ago.

Today I understand better that I was already thinking inside of a certain
scientific framework which very much depends on the guys with the funny hairs,
and the way things are conceptualized aren't really inevitable, they are
models, with imperfections and there's no magic source of authority who knows
the answer to everything. We don't have the blueprints from God and learning
more about the process of scientific discovery would have been useful perhaps.
Too bad that the average school teacher would not be up for that task. Nor
would most 10-14-year-olds have the necessary intellectual framework and
abstraction in place to understand what is even being discussed. "I'm the
teacher and this is how things are" is much easier to get across.

~~~
westoncb
This echoes my experience. It wasn't until I was 17 or so that I figured out
through independent reading that there actually are _ideas_ in scientific
work.

There's this weird kind of fake enthusiasm that always seems to be at the
foundation of attempts to get kids "interested in science". Like the adults in
charge also don't know what's interesting about it—or they're otherwise not
"up for the task" as you say—so they instead just extract a bunch of idea-free
surface details from the subject, and prop them up with outsized enthusiasm.

The result is a mockery. I was tempted to say at first that most kids can
probably sense it—but I don't know if that's actually true: my recollection
was that I spent a lot of time being surprised that I didn't find science and
math interesting, because that kind of thing was becoming part of my identity
already as a 'computer person'.

Then at some point when I found actually interesting treatments of scientific
subject matter I was mostly left feeling kinda ripped off that I'd been
offered this watered down fake version all my life. And what was with the
adults trying to convince me it was the real thing?

~~~
bonoboTP
> There's this weird kind of fake enthusiasm that always seems to be at the
> foundation of attempts to get kids "interested in science". Like the adults
> in charge also don't know what's interesting about it

It's been discussed a lot how STEM is seen by society as this dry useless
thing, that adults can safely joke about the shared experience of how they
hated it, got bad grades and have forgotten it all.

They'd like to spice it up, but have no idea how. So they say, "kids are
visual", make it more exciting and flashy. Put more pictures and colors in the
textbooks and write them with goofy fonts... It's basically symptomatic
treatment, trying to alleviate the pain of the (so-imagined) "inherently
painful" and dry STEM experience. And then there's another, stricter side
who's like "don't make it too much fun, let them experience that pain, I had
to do it too!". Both are missing the point.

I think I wouldn't have become a science-math-computer person if I hadn't had
casual conversations with my chemist dad here and there, while driving, while
walking. He didn't explicitly teach me this stuff, like let's sit down and
learn chemistry, but instilled in me a sense of how abstract bookish stuff is
connected to the real world and how it exists even outside the framework of
school. It gave me the useful ability to disconnect the teacher from the
subjects. Many students like the subjects taught by kind and inspiring
teachers and hate those taught by boring or malicious ones. I never studied to
please the teacher, but because I wanted to understand. If the teacher was
bad, I just read the book or asked my dad who'd often point out misleading
simplifications or outright falsehoods in what we were supposed to memorize
and recite. Learning that something can be wrong "in the book" was also very
helpful.

I think there are fundamental problems with the worldview that school instills
in students. On a base level people learn to separate real life and school.
When someone asks a quiz-like question, it seems to exists in schoolish-
bookish universe and the answer is a lookup in school memories. For example,
in these street interviews, when people are asked about some everyday,
relevant question (e.g. when was World War II), many would answer "I was never
good at [school subject X]" (e.g. history class), instead of saying, well
grandpa often tells me about those times, it was in his youth, so about 70
years ago (just an illustrative example).

~~~
westoncb
My situation was very similar: I got some kind of sense of what the "real
thing" was from my dad who was doing research in cognitive psychology and HCI
while I was growing up.

That may be an ingredient in what creates perspectives like ours: you have to
have some exposure to actual scientific thought processes to get a sense that
you're being served something inferior when it comes up.

Edit: I guess one thing that was kinda weird about my situation was that my
dad's area of research wasn't in the set of mainstream sciences taught in
public schools, so the 'official' sciences always remained separate in my mind
until much later. Meanwhile I assumed chemistry/physics/biology/math were all
just extremely dull.

------
tnecniv
This is a bit of a rant.

For my engineering degree, I had to pick between taking into to chem or intro
to bio. Since I was an electrical engineer and didn't care for either subject,
I put this requirement off until my senior year.

I took intro to chem because I thought it would be easier since I was
mathematically inclined, but it was one of the worst educational experiences I
had at university. The professor was clearly reciting the same notes he wrote
20 years earlier. The material was so trivial that the only way they could
induce any sort of curve into the class was to put more questions on the exam
than was reasonable to accomplish in the time period. The labs were abysmal,
did not really teach any sort of generalizable lab skills, and never worked.
If you asked the TAs for help, they would all gather on the far side of the
lab and return 20 minutes later saying they never studied the copper cycle so
they can't help you.

I dropped the class after my first exam out of frustration and decided to take
intro to bio. Pretty much every complaint I had about the chemistry class was
fixed in bio. The experiments even worked 9/10 times on the first try. Most
importantly, though, I felt like I could take the knowledge I took from the
class and use it in the future if the circumstance presented itself. Chemistry
just confirmed I was able to count things properly, and I'd have no idea how
to approach an actual chemical problem in the field.

~~~
sizzle
You must have grokked dimensional analysis from your strong EE math background
which made the class a piece of cake?

Maybe you should try organic chemistry, the curves in that class are brutal
and it's almost impossible to know everything intuitively to do well in tests
the first time you are exposed to the material and concepts. Fun class and
topic for the intellectually curious mind.

~~~
tnecniv
Perhaps that was it.

I've also talked to my chemist friends in grad school and they admit they
didn't really start liking chemistry until their junior year, which is when
they felt confident they could work in a lab and figure out an experiment on
their own. I noticed this is different than my engineering classes where they
got us working on open ended lab problems from the first semester. Obviously
our solutions were poor, but it got us feeling like we were able to apply what
we were learning right away.

------
blueadept111
Organic chemistry is the bomb. I was bored to death with inorganic chemistry,
maybe because of the way it was presented, but organic chemistry seemed like
suddenly being shown that all the cool stuff in the world is made of lego
pieces (carbon atoms), and there's a manual for how to put them together in
different ways.

I wasn't exposed to it until university, but I always thought the material
would make a good intro course for high school chemistry.

~~~
unzadunza
I think it all comes down to the instructor. I took Organic the 1st time with
a semi-famous professor who didn't want to be there and just sat next to an
overhead projector and wrote down formulas for us to memorize. Boring! I
squeaked by with a C. When I had to take it again for grad school because I
failed the organic part of the entrance exams (imagine that) I had a
completely different experience. The instructor obviously loved to teach and
she taught us the principals as to why A+B=C rather than just memorizing. I
loved that class and got an A.

~~~
ghaff
Organic and inorganic chemistry are almost two separate subjects. I also took
organic freshman year in college with a professor who I think probably ended
up in the running for a Nobel Prize. I'm not sure he was particularly bad but
it was a large lecture class, I hated organic and it was one of the first
subjects I ever didn't really grok at some level, and actually somewhat
changed majors because of it.

Inorganic on the other hand. I ended up getting a grad degree in Material
Science which is closely related to aspects of solid state chemistry--so, yes,
I liked aspects of chemistry. Just not organic.

------
zabzonk
Well, I learned chemistry (UK O-level and A-level) about 50 years ago, and
back then you could do almost anything you fancied with the reagents
available, which did stop short of things like fluorine, but only just. Did
you know you can dip your (dry) fingers into concentrated sulphuric acid and
only experience a feeling of warmth, as the acid reacts with the oils of your
skin? As to what we got up to with metallic sodium, carcinogenic aromatics,
and noxious gases, I shudder to think about now, but we did learn a lot of
chemistry on the side. We did have a brilliant teacher, though.

~~~
MadWombat
> fingers into concentrated sulphuric acid

You might want to wash your fingers under a lot of cold water after that :)

~~~
samatman
Real talk: don't do this.

Instead, wash the affected area with bicarbonate of soda. Then cold water.

~~~
MadWombat
Real talk it is. "Bicarbonate of soda" is not a thing, either say baking soda
or sodium bicarbonate. Sulfuric acid is water soluble, there is nothing wrong
with washing it off under running water. There is a bit of a problem if you
are washing off a lot of acid (i.e. you stuck your whole arm into a vat of
acid) or if you are using a container with water rather than a source of
running water. When sulfuric acid gets diluted a lot of energy gets released,
so if you have a lot of acid or not enough water, you might get burned before
the acid is washed away.

------
maestrokuro
I had to get up to date with general and physical chemistry over the last few
months for my graduate studies; my background is in theoretical physics and
I've not taken any chemistry above GCSEs. I spent my nights working through a
couple of chemistry textbooks and man, I _loved_ it. It's an exquisitely
complex subject: I wouldn't call it elegant, but there's an intrinsic beauty
in the sheer practicality of it.

A lot of very, very smart people I've spoken to - most of whom had taken
chemistry for A-levels - have found it odd that I've enjoyed it so much. Their
memories of the subject are in complete contradiction to mine (literally
speaking, because they associate chemistry with memorisation).

The difference, I think, is the fact that my introduction to chemistry came
_after_ I became competent with quantum and statistical physics: the
fundamental topics of physics from which chemistry as a whole springs forth.
Now that I think about it, the introductory chemistry book I studied at first
would have been unbearably frustrating if all I had to work with were
constitutive relations and hand-wavy arguments.

~~~
EliRivers
Chemistry was dull until I took Atomic Physics at university (where I was
reading Physics); I still remember the textbook, the masterpiece of brevity
"Atomic Spectra" by T.P.Softley.

At that point, suddenly there was an underlying structure to it and it was no
longer just the dull memorisation of facts that had made it my worst
performing subject at secondary school (like you, GCSE was as far as I took it
and I regret even wasting my time on it there). Far too late, of course; by
then Chemistry was a distant blob in the rear-view mirror.

------
papreclip
Why does chemistry have to be less boring? We are not short on chemists. Take
it from someone who left the field

Exploding balloons, frozen roses, elephant toothpaste are all very unlike what
a chemist will do for a living after they've been lured into the field with
this magician's act. Personally I don't think it's a bad thing if the classes
are a little dry.

It's true chem lab is a bit too much like following cooking instructions, but
as a former TA I assure you the train would come off the rails for 2/3 the
class if you tried to get students to do much more in the little time they
have. I had colleagues who went to undergrad in India where they still have
"identify this substance" exams. They related identifying solvents and powders
by smell, look, and feel. It's hardly learning the scientific method

~~~
mncharity
> Why does chemistry have to be less boring? We are not short on chemists.

Years back, I saw a talk suggesting there was no general shortage of STEM
employees in the US, only a need for more programmers, and for science PhD's
to more easily shift research focus. Though I've heard it is a bottleneck
elsewhere (eg, for Brazil spinning up an indigenous petroleum industry).

But there's also an issue of quality. US chemistry education research
describes precollege chemistry education content using adjectives like
incoherent, and as leaving both teachers and students steeped in
misconceptions. And available STEM competence is a training challenge in many
US job areas.

Less boring needn't be less dysfunctional, but less dysfunctional might be
less boring.

So when I was working on education content, my line was "it's not clear
there's a need, but if it's going to be widely taught anyway, it might as well
be taught less wretchedly".

There's also a question, that were science education to transformatively
improve, whether a now safety-focused US society would actually want a
population with widespread hands-on science skill. But perhaps intensifying
surveillance might bridge that gap.

------
black6
> Students are given incredibly precise instructions and told to find a
> certain result. If they fail to find the result, they are made to redo the
> “experiment”.

In my final Chemical Engineering Unit Operations lab course there was a
distillation column with the associated instrumentation suffering from neglect
and abuse, as indicated by the saw-tooth molar ratio across the height instead
of the smooth curve one would expect. My teammates for this lab insisted that
we just fake up good-looking data for the distillation column to put in our
report because _that 's what the other teams were doing_. I put my foot down
and told the team that we would use the data that was recorded, and draw
conclusions in the lab report about the poorly-maintained equipment, and maybe
something would be done about it before the next semester.

Well sonuvabitch... We received the only passing grade on that particular unit
op lab, and the department chair allocated money to refit the lab equipment.

When learning, it's not about the result as much as it is getting the process
right, something from which the standardized curriculum and test culture has
steered education away.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
I refused to "do a Hubble" and recorded the results I got and got marked down
for poor experimental accuracy.

Aside, I hate the practice of calling demonstrations "experiments".

~~~
fooker
What is "do a Hubble"?

~~~
pbhjpbhj
Hubble's data (for his "constant") was all over the place, he just drew a line
AFAICT and ignored all the data that didn't fit it.

~~~
fooker
Isn't that the exact definition of what a "trend line" is?

------
jlarocco
No offense to the author, but it might be poor teachers.

My high school chemistry teacher was one of the best I've ever had. She made
it very fun, and had a stream of kids taking her classes and ultimately
getting 4s and 5s on the AP chemistry test. It was so much fun I spent a
semester as her lab assistant.

~~~
jandrese
I took Chemestry 1 and 2 in High School and the classes could not have been
more different. Chem 1 was engaging with lab work, real world applications,
showing what a reaction meant in real life, etc...

Chem 2 was "memorize some math, do these abstract math problems, take a test,
repeat". Zero lab work. No demonstrations. Little discussion about how it
relates to the world. Most kids dropped out after that.

------
peterlk
> The laboratory work of introductory chemistry is closer to a cookbook than
> an experiment. Students are given incredibly precise instructions and told
> to find a certain result. If they fail to find the result, they are made to
> redo the “experiment”.

This absolutely resonates with me. I am re-learning chemistry now, and this
sticks out to me as something that frustrated me as a student. The amount of
time that it took to get the experiment right sapped away all my curiosity for
what I was actually doing. It's worth mentioning that part of the purpose of
the labs is to teach lab techniques. But the cost seems really high to me. I
think it teaches people to be good lab techs, but not good scientists.

~~~
intrepidhero
I'm not sure you can have one without the other.

~~~
peterlk
That's true, but I think the point is that we're stifling exploration. I was
trying to come up with an example challenge that would have been the right
kind of experiment for me. The one that came to mind is as follows:

$10 (pick any amount) of gold is dissolved in a glass is front of the student.
If they can get it back, the gold is theirs.

You can provide varying amounts of information to make the task easier or
harder. Grades depend on creativity, effort, and communication.

~~~
omar_a1
So, the 'cooler' experiments are also more dangerous, and your example is
illustrative of that. I'd be hesitant to hand students a flask of aqua regia
(the only acid that can dissolve gold) and tell them to go nuts.

Ignoring the obvious safety issue of every student having an effervescent,
volatile strong acid solution (which is tricky to handle safely even as an
experienced chemist), there are a handful of incompatible chemical
combinations with aqua regia that would require an immediate lab evacuation
and call to the fire department. You'd need constraints and some serious
vetting of the students' plans before you could let them touch the stuff.

I like the idea of open-ended experiments, but technique is so crucial to
these things that even if they're right in theory, in practice they'd often
get a negative result because of technical shortcomings of their technique.
This is why you end up with cookbook experiments

------
Koshkin
If I were a teacher, I would begin an introductory chemistry course with these
words: “Chemistry is the _single most important_ area of knowledge today and
for all foreseeable future. (Sorry physics.) This is because the world we live
in and we ourselves are built from atoms, and because all future progress, the
very evolution of the human being, all rest now on our understanding of the
limitless possibilities presented by an ability to control atoms’ behavior. It
is chemistry, in its modern sense, that holds the key to the future of the
humankind. We may never reach the stars, we may never understand the “true
nature” of elementary particles - but that’s OK, because 99% of what’s really
important for us in the world we live in can indeed be modeled - and
controlled - based on the simple view of the world as a bunch of atoms
interacting in certain ways.”

~~~
malkarouri
That is more or less the same pitch of physics, while most of the important
activity is taking place in the biosciences at the moment.

The underlying assumption is reductionism: if we understood atoms best, we can
understand and control everything built on them. I am not sure that I can
agree with you on that. Complexity makes that a pipe dream.

~~~
Koshkin
We understand atoms well enough already; as far as “bioscience” is concerned,
the current focus is on molecular structures (chemistry in its modern sense)
as the most promising direction of research.

------
ethhics
Good article, interesting material to think over.

I don’t think the author’s patronizing attitude towards historical theories is
helping his thesis much. He starts off proposing that chemistry in 50 years
will be way ahead of chemistry today, and so we need to focus on how evidence
from experimentation leads to theories to back them up instead of the
converse. Alchemy and humors and the four elements all had some amount of
observation of outcomes which lead to those theories, and later on evidence
disproved them and a new theory took hold. There’s no need to talk about how
silly and wrong those people were—rather, more so just how much more we know
about the world.

Additionally there’s a hidden assumption that introductory chemistry should be
teaching people what chemists do. I’d venture that a majority of people who
take an intro chem class won’t go on to do any experimental chemistry other
than baking. Their curriculum specifies that they need the class, and perhaps
those theoretical concepts are built upon from a biological, medical, or
physical angle. In this case, the important things to know are 1) the theory,
and 2) that the theory explains the world as we know it, so that if another
theory comes around to explain new evidence we don’t have “new math”-style
public backlash of unfamiliarity.

~~~
ghaff
There's actually an interesting online Harvard course that uses cooking to
illustrate (especially) chemistry principles. [1] The course isn't perfect but
it's an interesting take on using something that many people do day-to-day as
a way to introduce scientific concepts.

[1] [https://online-learning.harvard.edu/course/science-and-
cooki...](https://online-learning.harvard.edu/course/science-and-cooking)

~~~
mncharity
The lecture videos are online.[1] And if you're in Boston, are open to the
public (though arrive early for the line, and samples often don't make it to
the back of the room).

Teaching science and cooking together seems an underutilized opportunity.
There's McGee's On Food and Cooking, but... hopefully there's something better
now?

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL546CD09EA2399DAB](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL546CD09EA2399DAB)

~~~
ghaff
There's Cooking for Geeks (Jeff Potter from O'Reilly) which is pretty good
although McGee is probably still the bible. Some of Alton Brown's is also
pretty good.

TBH, a lot of Home Economics translated into more modern times and a more
scientific basis would probably make for pretty good curriculum additions.

------
vondur
This whole essay seems kinda rambling to me. Chemistry does have some issues
today, but it's mainly due to whom the audience for the Chemistry is meant
for. For example, it seems for a long time, Chemistry classes have been used
to weed people out of majors who aren't really committed to the
sciences/engineering. Gen Chem and O Chem both have been used for this. I
think the authors issue may be that he's not a Chem major, and most of the
information that is being given to him was not useful for his major or seemed
to lack coherence to him. And if you aren't a Chem major, I can see this. But
if you are a Chem major, then everything you learn in Gen Chem will be useful
to you in all of your other Chem courses. I see it being addressed now a bit
more than when I was in college. For example, you will see more O Chem courses
that are being directed at Bio type majors versus an O Chem class that is
directed at a Chem major. I think this is a good thing, most Bio majors
probably won't need as rigorous a course in O Chem as a Chem/BioChem major
would.

~~~
tpfour
The author has a very, very limited experience with Chemistry. I also found
the article to be a rambling rant with no actual basis in reality.

------
xkcd-sucks
About 10 years ago, the "honors" gen chem course at Cornell taught by Stephen
Lee was attempting to do this. He might have written the course notes into a
book by now but his health isn't great.

The course syllabus was presented as an onion bulb with the outer layers
labeled as parts of MO theory (wavefunctions etc) and the core was the
"beautiful flower" of the chemical bond, which grows out of the surrounding
concepts. The course began with wavefunctions discussed in the context of
audio and vibrating plates (e.g. violin bow on a square plate with salt shows
its resonance modes) and built it up into first principles derivation of
macroscopic observable properties of a substance.

Anyway, the coursework was absolutely brutal for most freshmen, and the
premeds hated it, but about 5 percent of students every year got absolutely
enamored by the beauty of solid state physics.

------
dreen
I was bored of chemistry until I started cheating on tests. Somehow creating
my own system to represent all those reactions so I can cram all of them in
3pt font on a 3x1cm piece of paper has gotten me sufficiently interested that
at some point I realised I've learnt it.

~~~
bitwize
This is why many collegiate level exams now permit you to cram as many
equations, rules, etc. as will fit on a single piece of paper (one side) and
use it during the exam.

~~~
ghaff
This isn't really new though. As I recall, it was the norm quite a few decades
ago for me.

~~~
fuzzfactor
No reference notes for us on exams, calculators either since they were still
considered too expensive for the average student.

Slide rules still required just like it had always been.

------
aazaa
> In 100 years, this was the shift. Chemistry, as something that one did, was
> relegated to more advanced courses. You would no longer be able to do
> chemistry by taking an intro course alone.

> The regress, then, would come in disregarding the empirical evidence
> entirely, and transforming chemistry entirely into something that one
> learned, rather than did.

The author makes some good points.

There are also some interesting connections to software.

The way many kids today learn how to write software today is by _doing_ and
_using_ first, and only later learning what they're doing. That's possible
thanks to the relentless compound effect of Moore's Law operating over six
decades or so.

It doesn't work that way in chemistry. Chemistry kits used to be commonplace
up until the 70s. Various chemicals (such as acetone, concentrated
isopropanol, and even certain drugs) used to be commonly available over the
counter without hassle. Safety concerns have obliterated that pathway. There
has been no Moore's Law making chemistry safer, cleaner, or more engaging over
the last 60 years.

So the path to professional chemist (or even enthusiastic amateur) is
completely different from the path to professional programmer.

Oddly enough, I see YouTube starting to re-kindle the idea that you can do
amazing things at home with some ordinary materials and a little know-how. No,
you don't have to read the whole damn book and take all the tests before
showing off.

Tinkering with powerful things you're not qualified to use is incredibly
addictive.

------
ineedasername
I think the pedagogical methods could be much improves if it began from the
standpoints of something like:

 _" we're going to go through the history of the development of Chemistry,
beginning with alchemists, and work our way forward with the principles
discovered and labs the illustrate those principles."_

Instead, from what I remember, we started with "Memorize the periodic table
and the molecular weights of each element. Quiz on Friday."

------
decebalus1
Perhaps it should be. Keeping only the genuine interested engaged and a high
bar of entry, we end up with only the competent actually pursuing a career in
chemistry. Similarly, front-end development and javascript was (and is) not
boring and look at where we are now. Nobody should be complaining that <insert
branch of science where if you fuck up people die> is boring.

------
thrower123
Introductory chemistry that would be interesting would trend towards the
expensive and the dangerous. I'm not sure how you fix that - high schools are
not going to be letting kids do metallurgy or create black powder fireworks,
so you are going to be stuck with the mostly pointless and very boring lab
work.

~~~
JackRabbitSlim
Michael Faraday's Chemistry History of a Candle.

[https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL0INsTTU1k2UCpOfRuMDR...](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL0INsTTU1k2UCpOfRuMDR-
wlvWkLan1_r)

"Interesting" doesn't have to mean "spectacle". Getting a few droplets of
water out of a burning candle isn't riveting to watch but its still very
interesting.

~~~
decebalus1
> "Interesting" doesn't have to mean "spectacle". Getting a few droplets of
> water out of a burning candle isn't riveting to watch but its still very
> interesting.

Judging by the amount of stimulation thrown at kids these days, getting water
out of a burning candle will most likely be classified between 'meh' to 'ok
boomer'.

------
intrepidhero
I had a chemistry book that I read cover to cover multiple times as a kid. It
introduced the periodic table, went through every major group, explained
reactions, acid/bases, oxidation, fission and fusion. It was a pretty solid
textbook. What was it that got me to read it over and over? Every single page
had something that related to real life. What's a noble gas and why is it
interesting? Well, it doesn't catch fire or corrode things, but it has this
neat property when you create an electric arc in it's presence. Here are the
subatomic properties that give rise to it's macroscopic properties. I'm sure
it was simplified but it was presented in a fun way that encouraged my sense
of wonder.

Good writing should be compelling. This true for __every __subject.

------
obilecantrem
There really needs to be two different general chemistry tracks, one for the
students that are thinking about studying chemistry and one for everyone else.
Where I went to college the general chemistry classes were very much designed
with the assumption that the students taking them would go on to study
chemistry. Despite this actually being a minority of the students taking them.
For those of us that did study chemistry, I think they prepared us well for
subsequent course and lab work. For those that didn't and just needed to
satisfy the requirement, I imagine they were very tedious.

------
datashow
One unfortunate truth is that even if you make class interesting, most of the
time "interesting" does not transfer to "learning". Most students only pay
attention to the fun part which includes color, sound, visual effects, etc.
but they quickly lose attention when cognitive engagement gets involved.

Every teacher can learn a few tricks to make class fun, but it is very
difficult to keep students engaged in learning conceptual and theoretical
knowledge.

Some students are problem-solvers. A cognitive gap between the problem and the
solution is enough to keep them motivated and engaged.

~~~
TeMPOraL
What you really need IMO is to make lessons _relevant_ to students. And I mean
personally, deeply relevant, not "I need this arbitrary piece of trivia to
jump through the next arbitrary hoop on an arbitrary series of hoops they keep
throwing at us for some weird reason" relevant.

~~~
intrepidhero
I agree. Relevance is something that lessons need and much of the curriculum I
encountered in school did a pretty poor job of explaining _why_ I might want
to learn a thing. But then again, a lot of students are in a class precisely
because it's a hoop they have to jump through (this was me in a lot of
classes). And there is only so much a teacher can do to entice these students
into interest and enthusiasm.

------
rs23296008n1
I think the whole problem is that people think experiments are less important
than they really are. I agree with the idea of doing experiments to test a
theory. This is in general. It applies in any field.

I've tutored people in how to do an experiment. They believed an experiment
had failed when in reality they had learnt something useful. The experiment
really fails when you learnt nothing, didn't get any useful result and it
didn't help to confirm or deny anything. An inconclusive result is actually a
signal that the experiment needs to be done better somehow - not that the
experiment was a failure.

Science gets taught badly as some kind of dogma when experimental process is
not understood. Plenty of people don't understand that the core of science is
taking the position of _not knowing why_ , coming up with a theory then
finding experimental ways to confirm or deny and then improving the theory.
They instead teach it as a set of facts, laws and rules. Ignorance of anything
is punished or ridiculed. Challenging that dogma results in punishment.

"I don't know" is actually the first step towards real knowledge and
discovery. Schools shouldn't teach that this is sinful. They confuse the
essential background knowledge as the entire field. Just the facts. Only teach
the facts and punish anyone who can't regurgitate them mindlessly.

How are you going to have enough humility to try several different approaches
and accept being wrong on most of them if you're too scared to be wrong on
even one of them? You have to accept being wrong. Anyone who isn't wrong often
enough probably isn't asking or questioning hard, wide or large enough. You
need to fail because if not, you're probably not experimenting. If you're not
failing then you are not asking enough questions or your questions lack depth.

Rocket launches are a classic example. If you haven't failed at least multiple
times you haven't actually tried hard enough. Difficult things require plenty
of experimentation. You have to risk being wrong on each attempt. Try
something new or confirm something is true. Better to explode on the launchpad
during experimentation than lie about your level of understanding and risk
some real payload or even worse, people's lives.

Writers have a similar refrain: if you haven't been rejected lately you aren't
writing enough or you aren't pushing enough boundaries.

------
gumby
Instead of “experiment” which brings to mind novelty and discussion, they’ll
should try “experience” or “practicum”.

------
jimmaswell
My Chemistry 101 class in college that I just took for elective credits was
fun and interesting. It had a lab class too that was harder for me but overall
good experience. It made connections to past physics class knowledge which I
enjoyed too. A lot of concepts stuck with me from it. Mileage must vary.

------
sandworm101
Do schools even have chem labs these days? Are the burners hooked up? Mine
were, but the kids i talk to now increasingly dont get to do real chemistry.
It's becoming just a book class for them.

------
crtlaltdel
I did not complete more than a hand full of college courses, though one of the
was an intro to chem. I absolutely loved it, despite it being one of those
once-a-week (Sunday morning) multi-hour slogs.

------
epx
My particular complaint was, too much focus in covalent x ionic bonds, while
metallic bonds were ignored completely. Not sure if current local high school
curriculum still does this.

------
TaylorAlexander
My introductory chemistry (and later physics) teacher was a fantastic, out of
this world individual. On the first day he told us about friar roger bacon
setting off gun powder to scare away some folks and then our teacher lit a
pile of gunpowder on fire (which burns rapidly but does not explode). Hell of
a way to start the class, and he had physical demos and historical stories
every day that tied in to his lessons.

Here’s a great video on the man:
[https://youtu.be/gX2vPmp2sSE](https://youtu.be/gX2vPmp2sSE)

And his course notes are here: [http://boomeria.com/](http://boomeria.com/)

Truly a rare a special individual.

------
tpfour
I'm sorry, but that is a _very_ poor argumentation. In fact, it's just a rant.

Maybe I should let this pass but this essay really rubs me the wrong way. I
would like to stress that the author is _not_ a chemist. That was obvious
before he wrote it in his text. He does not have formal training in the
discipline (art?) and thus his opinion should be taken with serious
skepticism.

On the other hand, I am a (published) college trained chemist, specialised in
computational/theoretical chemistry in grad school but I did go through a very
good program with anywhere between 10-15 hours of lab work every week, every
year. Contrary to the author, I remember the names of all the textbooks I used
because I spent so much time with them. Really, the author seems frustrated
with his own _very_ limited experience of chemistry.

There is a reason why we "follow recipes". Mishandling of chemicals can and do
cause injuries. Labs do get blown up. For all of my education, entrance to any
laboratory was conditional on passing a test. Every time. One would be
evaluated by either graduate students or professors before being allowed in.
If you did not know what you were going to do, how you were going to do it,
why you were doing it, what you should expect to happen, along with any other
necessary information deemed essential by the instructors, you would be
refused access to the lab and consequently get 0 in the mandatory laboratory
report. And accidents _still_ happened, sometimes innocuous, sometimes
dangerous to the point of having to evacuate the lab for a few minutes.

Not all experiments were "cookbook laboratory work" either. From the very
first lab session, students had agency in how you plan and execute your
experiment. No two students held notes exactly the same, for example. And no
two students researched the subject as much beforehand, something which was
_very_ obvious during lab work. Sharing a laboratory with students who did not
prepare properly is dangerous in a way you can't really grasp until you're
three hours into a multi-step anhydrous synthesis, you need to act fast to add
a reagent in your air-free setup and the student next to you flushes a syringe
of oxalyl chloride[1] in the sink beside you.

We _did_ have to analyse unknown compounds. We _did_ have a lot of liberty in
how we conducted experiments, as long as we prepared well and acted safely.
Practicing balancing chemical equations is NOT useless as the author suggests.
Contrary to what he seems to believe, empirical evidence is _all there is_.
Theories have to conform to reality, not the other way around.

All in all, this is a very bad argumentation that _completely_ misses the
point. The author is talking about general chemistry as if it defines a
complete chemical education. In actuality, general chemistry is only the very
most basic knowledge one needs to have to be allowed in a lab. Chemistry
doesn't stop there.

I was ready to give the author a chance but he has shown himself to be
unqualified to discuss the topic. Being a dilettante is fine but there is a
mountain of work separating a dilettante and a professional. Nobody on HN
would seriously consider a rant about the current state of Medical education
written by someone who had 2 semesters of biology.

[1]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxalyl_chloride](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxalyl_chloride)

~~~
omar_a1
Thank you! So much of this discussion is formed by a personal dislike of the
topic or bad classroom experiences. I, personally, find accounting to be
dreadfully boring, but I don't feel that the pedagogy of the field as a whole
needs to conform to my particular tastes.

Also, lots of suggestions of incredibly dangerous classroom experiments to
jazz things up, coming from people who don't know the dangers of the reactions
they're proposing.

This is a bad idea. If you don't do your due diligence, you end up setting
school children on fire [0].

[0][http://chemjobber.blogspot.com/2019/06/civil-trial-of-nyc-
te...](http://chemjobber.blogspot.com/2019/06/civil-trial-of-nyc-teacher-
whose.html?m=1)

------
User23
My high school chemistry teacher opened with the thermite reaction experiment.
Chemistry at my school was far from boring.

~~~
peglasaurus
"Look at the boring explosion. Did that entire hillside just vaporise? How
boring!"

 _Said no one ever_

I remember a chemistry teacher running around in panic because he dropped a
sample of something (phosphorus or sodium ?) on his shoe and it was stuck. He
had carefully taken it out of a small oil filled container. Smoke filled the
room. His shoe was burnt and four classes surrounding that lab were evacuated.

------
mrcactu5
what are the good freshmen level chemistry textbooks these days ?

------
techslave
maybe just me, but intro chem was not boring in the slightest. o.chem OTOH ...
rote memorization for the most part, from a firehose

------
turk73
I really enjoyed taking Chemistry in college, especially the labs. I learned a
lot and found it to be far more engaging that my Mathematics curriculum.

The problem with Chemistry is that to do anything interesting professionally,
you must have a PhD. The PhD in Chemistry is a long, difficult slog.

------
csense
I wonder if it's related to liability.

If you give teenagers a bunch of chemicals and tell them to learn by
experiment, they'll probably end up doing bad stuff (drugs / poisons /
explosions), either by accident or on purpose.

In 1850, society was a lot more accepting of this kind of thing than it is
now.

~~~
mncharity
Perhaps increasing concern for safety, and liability, and more recently,
regulation of narcotics and explosive supply chains.

It's a meme that a 1950's and earlier chemistry set couldn't be sold now, for
all of the above. But apparently sets were already changing with increasing
concern for safety from the 1960's on.

VR/AR changes the relationship between safety and practice, so it'll be
interesting to see what happens next.

