Cool Science

Jenn made a mind-blowing, amazing dinner tonite and I think that earns her the right to be the cook for the rest of our natural lives. I'm also glad she had to field Henry's question 'what are hundreds' instead of me. I'd be lost at how to start to explain this to somebody for the first time.

That's how I feel with basic chemistry material where I realize that I'm far enough away from this early material that I need to reconnect with it. Once or twice I've struggled on how to explain something that I long ago learned and now take for granted and that has been humbling; so I go back to my office and prep a mini-lecture on it for our next class meeting and it's ok.

Beginnings are profound and difficult in the sciences I argue because we have to build a physical knowledge of the world from nothing. I have to admit that I resort to some crutches here. Like many, I assume the students are happy with the concept of an atom. True, I justify and explore atoms in introductory chapters, but on a gut level we count on students being acclimated to the concept in order to save having to spend an entire semester justifying atoms. And we never really teach temperature properly in early chemistry. Temperature is something that we all strongly understand on an intuitive level, yet I challenge you to think about what is it that you are measuring with your thermometer.