An article about new science labs at Stetson University brings up a relevant question: why aren’t students interested in physics and chemistry?
“How many of you are chemistry majors?”
Thirty-five students remained still. No one raised a hand.
Stetson University’s $8.5 million Sage Hall Science Center — an addition to the 1960s-era science building of the same name — started Wednesday not with the bang of an experiment gone wrong, but the whisper of indifference.
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Though interest in biology and environmental science soars, fewer students are expressing an interest in the traditional physical sciences — including chemistry and physics.
“We beat our heads all the time, trying to figure out what is it?” said W. Tandy Grubbs, professor of physical chemistry.
I’m taking college classes at night with the eventual goal of becoming a life sciences teacher. I stayed away from physics as a career choice quite frankly because of the math. As for chemistry, I got a very ugly introduction to the subject in high school. My high school chemistry teacher was brilliant, but couldn’t teach to save his life. As a result, chemistry was just a confusing, scary mess. However, I’m taking a college chemistry class now and I’m doing OK with it. It’s frustrating at times, but once the basic concepts click, the challenges of solving chemistry problems becomes fun. In general, the same thing happens for me in math. I loathed math in high school. But in college, once I overcame some of the initial mental roadblocks of “this is too hard and scary”, it became a lot of fun to solve what are essentially number puzzles.
I can see a potential answer to the problem of why kids stay away from the “hard” stuff both in myself and in my own two teenagers. Effort. It takes a commitment of effort to get this stuff. I didn’t want to put that effort in when I was a kid. It wasn’t until I became an adult that I found out that if I put the effort in, I’ll get something cool out: the satisfaction of figuring things out! Hey, I’m smart! Unfortunately, it looks like many of today’s kids (my own kids included) just don’t want to put that effort into the work.
Anyone know the answer?
Interesting.
“it became a lot of fun to solve what are essentially number puzzles.”
I was an “A” student in every subject until it came to chemistry. I just didn’t get it – until the night before the final that is. Then the LIGHT BULB lit! “It’s MATH!!” – I got 110% on the final, which saved my grade.
I told this story to my 13 year old son before his introduction to chemistry this year. He came home from school one day and said – “I’m glad you told me that story Mom – I get it”.
He wants to major in chemistry. 🙂
The real problem is wimp chemistry sets. I’m 56 years old, and when I was a kid I had a Gilbert chem set that had real, honest-to-gods dangerous chemicals in it. You could make bad smells and even BLOW SHIT UP!
A huge majority of over-40 scientists and IT innovators, including Vint Cerf, who co-developed the TCP/IP protocol that made the Internet possible, got their start with chemistry sets.
Now all the fun stuff is illegal. Not only chem sets with guts are gone, but model rocketry is a shadow of its former self.
I didn’t go into chemistry, but my childhood science and experimentation background, combined with a love for building exotic electronic circuits, led to a satisfying (and lucrative) career in science/tech/IT journalism.
Kids need bad-ass chemistry sets, something like Erector sets (which have also nearly disappeared), gas-powered model airplanes, and other loud and possibly dangerous toys to become fascinated with real, hands-on science. But our little bubble-wrapped darlings are no longer allowed to play with such things. Fah!
Physics and chemistry are the only hard basal sciences. All of your
“-ologies” like biology, geology, psychology, etc. are just disciplines that study a discrete organization of chemistry and physics.
Our best and brightest should be studying (and eventually teaching) these areas. Instead they go “pre-med” and get sucked into that vortex. Those that can survive the rigor of the curriculum may not be the best ones to teach it. That is also an issue.
Forgive me if I just ramble for a while, but the question of how you stimulate interest in science has been on my mind quite a bit. Robin’s comments on early exposure to chem sets, rockets, and model airplanes rang true with me…and brought back great memories of flying dirt as I set off bombs I had made from homemade gunpowder when I was in sixth grade…or attaching M-80s to an Estes rocket and “shelling” the next campsite at scoutcamp. It is not clear to me, however, if this really caused my interest or was merely an outlet for it. Maybe for me it was both, but I don’t recall many friends who were as interested…except when I was going to “put on a show”. Likewise, none of my friends were asking their parents for microscopes or telescopes for Christmas like I did.
Anyway, I was certainly not a math wiz, though I ploddingly learned it well enough to get by. Thought I would go to medical school until I discovered organic chemistry in college and fell in love with it. The beauty of a synthesis of a natural compound, ala R.B. Woodward, was genius to me…granted we’re talking thirty-five years ago. And almost no math involved…all the better. Biology at the time just seemed to be the study of one enzyme after another that couldn’t be described as anything more than a “blob”. But after four years of graduate school in organic synthesis there seemed to be no way, or time, to really learn how to be a chemist as well as learn about what those blobs were doing…and doing things that were really interesting. It is a tremendous thing nowadays that graduate education can be more interdisciplinary. Long story short, I ended up going to medical school…sucked into the “vortex” as Kevin called it. Twenty-five years later and the “vortex” had certainly sucked the life out of me. Not the least of the field of medicine’s problems today is the difficulty of dealing with a society ridden with woo. A society so rife with magnet therapy, faith healing, “alternative medicine”, “detoxing”,and anti-vaccination woo that the task of taking care of people can be frustrating and thankless for primary caregivers.
Again, long story short, I’m out of that mess and teaching comm college anatomy and physiology…and sleeping much more soundly…trying to do my part to “poo on the woo”. While the preparation of the students seems abysmal at times, it’s fun to see the light go on in their heads once in a while. Eric Mazur’s piece on science lectures in SCIENCE (Jan 2, 09)was interesting, and I loved his quote that the way it’s done now information seems to go from the notes of the professor to the notes of the student without passing through the brain of either.