This is prompted by Andrew Bolt’s alarm about teaching dreamtime stories and cognate mythology before exposing students to the periodic table.
Ron Horner turned up at Launceston Grammar from Manchester in 1960. He was appointed as Senior Science Master and also the Head of the Junior School.
On the side he started a Classical Music Club, a Science Library and a wandering Sunday cricket team that played village green matches around the country. This gave a handful of lucky boarders the chance to get some decent tucker one day a week.
He administered a test to find out roughly where we were at in Chemistry as we started year 10. He was gobsmacked to find how little we had leaned in the previous three years in the hands of “Screw” Hampton, an Anglo-Indian who was full of tales of the war and the role that his Ghurkas played in it. Incidentally I am in debt to “Screw” for converting me into the breakthrough bowler with some coaching provided while he umpired the first game that I played in the First XI. I am not sure if coaching by the umpire is in the spirit of the game, still, it only consisted of three words, hissed through closed teeth “Pitch it up!”, and it worked.
Getting back to Chemistry, with an exam for the School Certificate at the end of the year, Ron Horner went into catchup mode, including some lunchtime classes and an early return from the holidays at hte end of second term. He was a truly inspired teacher and this came through in his teaching of the periodic table.
“Good afternoon boys. Today we are doing the periodic table of elements. But first I want to tell you about a little place in Paris where bored businessmen go at lunchtime to watch young ladies dancing and showing off their legs and their underwear.”
This is a small and rather exclusive establishment. In the front row there are only two seats. In the second and third rows there are eight seats. As you go back the rows get longer and there are more than eight seats.
Of course the best seats are up front, and in the middle of the rows, so the first two men sit in the front row, then the next eight fill the second row, the next eight fill the third row.
The fourth row has more than eight seats, so so the next arrivals fill the middle eight seats and those following have the tricky choice of opting for the side in that row or going a row back to get middle seats.
What has this got to do with chemistry?
Think of the lunchtime businessmen as electrons, filling up the space around the nucleus of the “solar system” atom. That is, the atom decipted as the nucleus (sun) surrounded by several layers of electrons like the planets. The first man represents Hydrogen, with one electron. The second is Helium. That fills the first level or “shell” of electrons.
The next (third) shell has the capacity for eight electrons. These represent the next eight elements in the table -Lithium, Berillium, Boron, Carbon, Nitrogen, Oxygen, Fluorine, Neon.
He also taught as to remember the first elements with a formula that you could learn to roll off the tongue like a chant …HeHeLiBebCNOF, NeNaMagAlSiPSCal.
So the next eight represent Sodium, Magnesium, Aluminium, Silicon, Phosporus, Sulphur and Chlorine and Argon. Aragon is an inert gas at the end of the line and it does not fit into the little song.
It is too long ago for me to remember the chemical point that he was making about the choice between sitting wide out in a closer row or moving back for a centre seat.
The point is that a lot of chemical behavior and the characteristics of the elements become comprehensible in a systematic way when you get the drift of the “solar system” atom with shells of eletrons.
For a start, the valency is determined by the number of electrons in the outer shell. The model explains whether the element is inclined to form ionic bonds (losing or gaining electrons to fill the shell, thus gaining a positive or negative charge) or instead forms covalent bonds which fill the shell by sharing electrons.
Think of stability (happiness) as a full outer shell which can be obtained by gaining or losing electrons, depending on the number in the shell to start with and the size of the atom.
The most stable elements start off with full shells and so they are inert because they don’t want to gain or lose or even share, they are the ones down the right side of the table – Helium, Neon, Argon etc
The elements down the left side all start with one electron in the outer shell and they can lose that electron to form a positive ion with a charge (valency) of one. The elements next to them Be, Mg etc start with two outer electrons and so tend to lose them to form positively charged ions, valency two.
On the other side, under Oxygen, the atoms start with six electrons in the outer shell and they tend to gain two electrons (filling the shell) by forming a charged ion with valency two. Beside them, next to othe inerts, the atoms start with seven electrons in the outer shell and so tend to gain one.
It is just about the end of the lesson but focus on Carbon for a moment. It has six electron, two in the inner shell and four in the next. Will it fill the shell by losing four electrons to form a positive ion with valency four? Or will it gain four to make a negagive ion? In fact it forms covalent bonds by sharing its four electrons with other atoms. It can share with four H atoms (CH4)and it can share with two Oxygen atoms (CO2). Or it can share one of its electrons with an other C atom and have three left over to share with other atoms, hence the great carbon chains with all kinds of additions hanging off, which orm the basis of living matter.
You can explain other things, like the difference between metals and non-metals, etc etc but that is for another day.
The point is that the sooner you give students the idea of the basic structure of the atom you can organize a mass of material that makes little sense without the underlying rationale.
A couple of years after Ron Horner we encountered Dr Cheesman at the uni who introduced us to the rather more mysterious Bohr atom where the nice solid “planet” electrons got replaced by mysterius fields of forces. But he also said that these theories come and go, but metals keep on behaving like metals, salts of Magnesium and Potassium keep on behaving in the same way and so on.
Marvelous!
Abu Chowdah
27 Feb 10 at 11:01 am
Whilst I agree with Bolt that leaving the elements until year 10 is a bit late, I’m not sure why you are worried about dream-time stories coming first — for many kids, they simply make nice little stories, and nice little stories can come at any age.
conrad
27 Feb 10 at 11:03 am
My kids know the three little pigs but not a whole lot of chemistry. I think the three little pigs is probably more useful. Don’t build houses out of straw and be wary when somebody knocks at the door.
TerjeP (say Tay-a)
27 Feb 10 at 12:00 pm
Yes TerjeP, and the limits to huffing and puffing.
ken n
27 Feb 10 at 12:21 pm
Having a science degree with a co-major in History & Philosophy of Science, I can see a real benefit in introducing Science to infants and primary school children historically, starting with the Dreamtime and other pre-historic mythologies before hitting the Egyptian and Babylonian cosmologies and arithmetic, then the Greeks, Arabs, and Renaissance. But I would call the course “Nature.”
“Science” proper would start in high school, or maybe 5th or 6th class. It is much easier for young kids to get on top of ancient understandings of the physical world, especially the sorts of experiments used, observations made, math used, etc.
By the time, kids hit high school Science, they should be able to provide incisive critiques of all the pre-Newton/Darwin “science” including the pre-historic Dreamtime stuff. That is, by high school, this stuff should be regarded as backward compared to the scientific knowledge we have today, but nevertheless an important link to ‘how we got here.’
Peter Patton
27 Feb 10 at 12:37 pm
“Aragon is an inert gas at the end of the line and it does not fit into the little song”
???
I thought Aragon had something to do with Lord of the Rings.
boy on a bike
27 Feb 10 at 12:37 pm
I was taught the periodic table from year 7. And I suspect that learning ancient Greek and Roman history would be more helpful than learning dreamtime stories which haven’t been documented and therefore we cannot be sure of the veracity of claims that they had been told for thousands of years.
Samuel J
27 Feb 10 at 12:38 pm
Samuel
I don’t think that really matters all that much to 7 year olds. We teach them about Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, Jesus rising from the Cross… And kids are nowhere near ready for debates in the historiography of science!
Peter Patton
27 Feb 10 at 12:59 pm
Point taken Conrad! Of course stories come before science. Indeed according to the master, science emerged from stories and myths in the process of discussion and testing.
Rafe
27 Feb 10 at 1:12 pm
When I went to school many moons ago we had plenty of sessions on Dreamtime stories.
We thought they were dreary then and I am sure my kids will be equally discriminating in terms of deciding what needs to be retained in their hard drives and what needs to be put in the trash folder to make room for important knowledge.
Abu Chowdah
27 Feb 10 at 1:47 pm
Abu
My high school age niece said recently: “If I have to hear once more about the genocide of the fricking aboes, I’m going to scream. If there was a genocide, why are they still here boring the shit out of the rest of us 200 years later!?”
I don’t think those who designed the politically correct school curriculum ever imagined that the students would in fact develop truly ‘critical thinking’ skills by turning those critical skills on the teachers and curriculum themselves!
Peter Patton
27 Feb 10 at 1:56 pm
Amusingly, the same people who make up the creationist left look down their noses at Sarah Palin.
C.L.
27 Feb 10 at 2:37 pm
Good afternoon boys. Today we are doing the periodic table of elements. But first I want to tell you about a little place in Paris where bored businessmen go at lunchtime to watch young ladies dancing and showing off their legs and their underwear.”
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Now that’s a teacher!
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“Screw” Hampton, an Anglo-Indian who was full of tales of the war
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I had one of those (Vietnam). Always had the impression he was lying.Lying about knowing the subject or about battle experience, or both I never discovered.
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How far into the year did Horner show up? I seem to recall I first encountered the table of elements in Elementary School. Gr 6 I think. But I definitely knew the gist of it by Gr 8. Could never remember the whole thing.
Adrien
27 Feb 10 at 2:39 pm
Sam J – I suspect that learning ancient Greek and Roman history would be more helpful than learning dreamtime stories which haven’t been documented and therefore we cannot be sure of the veracity of claims that they had been told for thousands of years.
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I wouldn’t know about these particular dream time stories. But Greek literature was based on oral tradition itself. There’d be good reason to familiarize kids with the major Aboriginal myth as well as, say, Gilgamesh, the Trojan War, the story of Isaac, the story of Romulus, Job, Beowulf, the Erinyes and associated Weird Sisters, the Monkey King; like that. Part of the study of history and literature.
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Naturally politically correct versions of them are a dumb idea. There’s nothing politically correct about them. ‘Cept maybe Isaac.
Adrien
27 Feb 10 at 2:46 pm
There’s nothing wrong with including dreamtime but not in “science.”
Likewise, Chinese medicine is simply a dead scientific endeavour, much like alchemy. Alternative medicine is downright dangerous. Might as well teach trutherism in history – that’s the parallel.
The dreamtime itself is the least problematic in the classroom because any kid can see it’s clearly fiction. As long as it’s flagged as mythology and not included in a science curriculum, there’s no problem.
daddy dave
27 Feb 10 at 3:37 pm
By the way, I had a relief teacher in second grade who came in and taught us all about how clouds are made and how heat rises and the difference between clouds and smoke; and why you should stay low to the floor in a house fire. All in the space of a week. Brilliant. Then we went back to mindless learning of nothing.
The moral of the story is, kids can learn science at a pretty young age if it’s pitched right.
daddy dave
27 Feb 10 at 3:39 pm
Chinese medicine is simply a dead scientific endeavour, much like alchemy.
I’m grateful to the Chinese concept of Qi for relieving most of my back pain after I slipped a disc in my lower vertebrae. Western medicine is mostly useless for backs, as I discovered. But Qi’s not really a scientific theory, just a lucky coinicidence with something in the body that responds to external manipulation.
Michael Fisk
27 Feb 10 at 4:22 pm
dd
It is a mistake to plop “Chinese medicine” in the same category as alchemy. I have personally received benefits from practitioners of “Chinese medicine;” not that that makes it a “science.” OTOH, I am not familiar with similar successes when it comes to alchemy.
Peter Patton
27 Feb 10 at 4:26 pm
A lot of Chinese medice seems to work. It’s probably the result of trial and error over a long period of time. In that sense it’s scientific. It’s just the ‘why’ is unknown.
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I also find crystal pyramids to be most beneficial.
Adrien
27 Feb 10 at 4:34 pm
Having a science degree with a co-major in History & Philosophy of Science, I can see a real benefit in introducing Science to infants and primary school children historically, starting with the Dreamtime and other pre-historic mythologies before hitting the Egyptian and Babylonian cosmologies and arithmetic, then the Greeks, Arabs, and Renaissance. But I would call the course “Nature.”
It might be nice in theory. Is this what the national curriculum is actually going to do, or will it pass off creation myths as “equally valid” to scientific knowledge? If the latter is the case, we have just introduced a creationist science curriculum.
Michael Fisk
27 Feb 10 at 4:35 pm
Having said that (about Qi), the obvious flaw is that because we have no idea what Qi is, if indeed it exists at all, the possibilities for advances in acupuncture are pretty limited. If the technique does develop, it’ll be through more of the same trial and error that we saw over the last two millenia.
Michael Fisk
27 Feb 10 at 4:42 pm
we have no idea what Qi is, if indeed it exists at all,
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Well it has been proven to be more effective than Born Again Christianity.
Adrien
27 Feb 10 at 4:47 pm
It’s probably the result of trial and error over a long period of time. In that sense it’s scientific. It’s just the ‘why’ is unknown.
We’re back here again. The fact that something has gone through a process of trial and error does not make it scientific. Your own measure can’t distinguish between a methodology that wants to actually answer the question “‘how’, not ‘why’, does it work?” with another that is not even concerned with the question ‘how’ but simply “Does it work?”. Chinese medicine may be practical, but it is not scientific.
dover_beach
27 Feb 10 at 4:49 pm
db
Nobody here has suggested otherwise. We all agree “Chinese medicine” should not be taught as Science. But neither should be banished to the level of alchemy.
Peter Patton
27 Feb 10 at 4:53 pm
I don’t think those who designed the politically correct school curriculum ever imagined that the students would in fact develop truly ‘critical thinking’ skills by turning those critical skills on the teachers and curriculum themselves!
I’ve thought about whether we should introduce a unit into the national curriculum called “Communism is Good”. Students will be brainwashed for one semester about how wonderful Communism is. All the crimes of Communism will be totally whitewashed, while students will have the exclusive virtues of Communism, and how it is the answer to every social problem in existence, drilled into them. Then they’ll be sent on a one-month field excursion to North Korea, on exactly the same rations as a North Korean farmer.
A teacher who says ANYTHING mildly social democratic or progressive in class after that tribulation will have their face stomped on by two dozen pairs of size 7 doc martens.
Michael Fisk
27 Feb 10 at 4:56 pm
The fact that something has gone through a process of trial and error does not make it scientific
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Carl Sagan wrote that science originates in the trial and error of hunter-gatherers. I’ll stick with him.
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It’s thru trial and error that I’ve discovered the uses of crystal pyramids. Always effective.
Adrien
27 Feb 10 at 5:00 pm
Interesting curriculum Michael. What’s it to be called? Feed the kids bullshit then starve ‘em to death?
Adrien
27 Feb 10 at 5:01 pm
Nobody here has suggested otherwise. We all agree “Chinese medicine” should not be taught as Science.
You spoke to soon, PP.
Carl Sagan wrote that science originates in the trial and error of hunter-gatherers. I’ll stick with him.
Science may originate in trial and error, which would indicate that trial and error was a necessary condition of any scientific endeavor, but it clearly is not a sufficient condition. By your own lights, you cannot distinguish between the practical and the scientific by reference to ‘trial and error’ alone. That was the trial and I’ve exposed your error; if you claim to be a devote of science you will relinquish the error I have just exposed.
dover_beach
27 Feb 10 at 5:17 pm
DB – I didn’t say Chinese Medicine should be taught as science. I said that it’s probably the result of trial and error and in that sense it’s scientific.
Adrien
27 Feb 10 at 5:23 pm
DB – I didn’t say Chinese Medicine should be taught as science. I said that it’s probably the result of trial and error and in that sense it’s scientific.
It seems to me your hedging your bets; its not science but in one sense it is scientific.
dover_beach
27 Feb 10 at 5:29 pm
db
Indeed, I humbly turn the floor over to you!
Peter Patton
27 Feb 10 at 5:31 pm
“A lot of Chinese medice seems to work. ”
Funnily enough, some of the stuff where the active ingredients are known gets banned in places like Australia and the US (ephedra being the well known one — also used by other cultures too) — especially the ones with stimulants. So Ritalin is fine but something similar gets banned because it’s called Chinese medicine (or Native American medicine for that matter). Perhaps there are good reasons not find out why things are so sometimes.
conrad
27 Feb 10 at 5:56 pm
conrad
You should know by now, that there is no such thing as “illicit drugs” in this country; only licensed versus unlicensed dealers.
Peter Patton
27 Feb 10 at 6:03 pm
I seem the recall studying the periodic table in year 10 and after.
Sinclair Davidson
27 Feb 10 at 6:09 pm
The draft national curriculum (English, Maths, Science, and History) can be downloaded from The Age site.
http://www.theage.com.au/national/backtobasics-approach-for-australias-classrooms-20100227-pa8t.html
Peter Patton
28 Feb 10 at 10:54 am
It seems to me your hedging your bets; its not science but in one sense it is scientific.
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I think I’ve made myself perfectly clear. Trial and error is the basis of experiment which is an aspect of science.
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Now how about the 100% effectiveness of crystal pyramids?
Adrien
28 Feb 10 at 11:43 am
I think I’ve made myself perfectly clear. Trial and error is the basis of experiment which is an aspect of science.
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I guess it depends on your definition of science. Since it’s a fuzzy concept and the word has multiple meanings, it’s possible to define it very broadly, and you’ve chosen to define it as broadly as you possibly can. I think, while “trial and error” as you say describes an aspect of science, it doesn’t on its own make something scientific. Trial and error is simply “trial and error”, nothing more or less. Calling it science isn’t useful and is actually misleading IMHO.
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Now how about the 100% effectiveness of crystal pyramids?
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Placebo effect.
Not that there’s anything wrong with that.
daddy dave
28 Feb 10 at 12:55 pm
I guess it depends on your definition of science. Since it’s a fuzzy concept
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The acquisition of reliable knowledge by observation, hypothesis and testing of such by experiment. The trial and error that leads the development of agriculture or let’s a tribal woman in France c.10000 BCE know that these root is good for sick kids is a rudimentary form of the above.
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Chinese medicine is scientific in that some of its techniques appear to work reliably. Hence the hypothesis that it is real medicine and not a sorcerer’s conjob has stood up to a certain experimental rigour.
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Unlike crystal pyramids which always work and I know exactly why.
Adrien
28 Feb 10 at 4:29 pm
Adrien
The school subject is not called Rudimentary Science
Peter Patton
28 Feb 10 at 5:42 pm
The acquisition of reliable knowledge by observation, hypothesis and testing of such by experiment.
Chinese medicine has no “hypothesis” and it is not particularly reliable because it is built upon a hazy theoretical foundation that is not (currently) open to examination. They can’t demonstrate to you what “Qi” is, how it runs along your “meridians”, and how this affects your health. There is no “theory” that you can actually test and observe. Their methods only work on a modest number of mostly pain-related conditions. And nobody knows why. It’s a combination of good fortune – it’s worked on me – and a bit of pseudo-religion. Not science.
Michael Fisk
28 Feb 10 at 5:43 pm
DD – trial and error is me trying to work a DVD player. It’s not science.
Michael Fisk
28 Feb 10 at 5:44 pm
Chinese medicine is scientific in that some of its techniques appear to work reliably.
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That doesn’t make it science. If it did, then doing pretty much anything that works is science.
I’m not sure why you’re so keen to stick a little tag that says “Science” as a sort of quality label, like the heart foundation tick of approval. To do so, you’ve diluted what the word means to the point that pretty much anything is science, rendering the word almost meaningless and certainly useless.
But this is just a semantic game on your part, since it differs from “scientific investigation in the Western tradition” in important ways. I don’t want to have to go hunting around for another word to describe what we currently call “science” so please stop abusing it.
daddy dave
28 Feb 10 at 5:56 pm
I’d basically subscribe to the John Derbyshire school of thinking on education – I want to live among people who can read, write, give correct change and name the capital of their state. Beyond that, I think education is a luxury that people should pay for themselves. Most of what people learn beyond 5th grade is anyway forgotten.
I remember being taught about the periodic table sometime during highschool, but it hasn’t stuck with me much beyond the base elements. Likewise I remember doing a bit of Aboriginal studies every year from primary school to grade 10 and none of it has stuck with me (and I’m part aboriginal so there goes any theory of cultural disposition). If there was anything lacking it was the face that I wasn’t taught much post-European settlement Australian history.
asf
28 Feb 10 at 6:05 pm
dd
In any undergrad course on the history and philosophy of science, a text along the lines of Chalmers’ What Is This Called Science will be used. But what these courses tend to do is at least begin with a recognition that ‘Science’ today is real – its conclusions, methods, knowledge, and practitioners.
So, rather than get caught up in tedious semantic games for 1 or 2 semesters, what these courses do is drill down into this very real, very observable, non-controversial thing we call ‘science.’ In that context, these courses are very much at home with such contemporary issues as ‘peer review’ in climate change journals. They do not need to bother arguing the case that 12,000 year old French women frolicking in the fields of Provence, or Chinese women traipsing among the tree bark and dandelion of inner Mongolia gathering floral versions of Viagra are also actual real scientists.
Peter Patton
28 Feb 10 at 6:12 pm
If they want to learn the elements they should listen to Tom Lehrer.
Mild Colonial Boy, Esq
28 Feb 10 at 10:12 pm
pp that book “What is this thing called science” is a really great book, and is a reasonably light, breezy, yet comprehensive coverage of pretty much the entire topic of ‘philosophy of science.’
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The one thing I don’t like about it is that it’s too flippant; it summarily dismisses philosopher after philsopher with almost one-line slogans. Anyone reading that book would think that Feyerabend was the last man standing, while all others (e.g., Popper) were vanquished by their own errors of thinking.
daddy dave
1 Mar 10 at 9:37 am
dd
I agree. That is why I added ‘texts along the lines of.’ Kuhn’s book is also a great example of explicitly stating it does know what Science is, and has no problem pointing it out. With that out of the way, he gets into the nitty-gritty of what happens during the scientific process. But again, Kuhn is neither perfect, nor even the last word, but pretty indispensable.
Peter Patton
1 Mar 10 at 10:33 am