In the Classroom
“Almost Like Weighing Someone’s Soul”: Chemistry in Contemporary Film Donald J. Wink Department of Chemistry, University of Illinois at Chicago, Chicago, IL 60607;
[email protected] Goll and Woods (1) recently described how they use the film Apollo 13 to support a wide range of discussions about science with beginning students. They discuss how different scenes illustrate observation, explanation, hypothesis development, and facts about chemical systems. By bringing the film into the classroom, Goll and Woods give an entertainment vehicle a new purpose: presenting vivid examples of important points. The use of popular film in instruction has been the subject of basic research in anchored instruction, which refers to teaching in a way “anchored” to a particular real-world or dramatic scenario (2). For example, there was a study of how scenes from the beginning of the film Raiders of the Lost Ark had significant impacts on student attentiveness and longterm recall of important principles illustrated in the scenes (3). This paper outlines the use of small clips that can aid in teaching general chemistry. Instead of using one sciencerich film, I developed these clips from several sources. None are longer than six minutes. While each clip can be used in multiple ways, I have grouped them according to the view of the science in each. These are useful in the general chemistry classroom to illustrate particular facts, to elicit student responses to viewing chemistry in dramatic situations, and to frame certain questions directly related to topics in the course. Chemicals That Threaten: Legends of the Fall (4 ), The Rock (5 ), and Dante’s Peak (6 ) Many chemical educators recognize that students and the general public view chemical substances as dangerous and threatening things that can do great harm. One source of this idea is popular film, where students see dramatic problems with chemicals. These can be discussed, in general, as part of an attempt to situate chemistry honestly, acknowledging the “Janus” character of chemistry discussed by Hoffmann (7). Three films lend themselves to this discussion, two using artificial substances and the third a natural phenomenon. Most introductory chemistry courses discuss the difference between compounds and elements. A common example is the difference between sodium and chlorine on the one hand and the compound sodium chloride on the other. The relatively innocuous character of NaCl is far different from the reactive properties of pure Na or pure Cl2. An instructor can mention that chlorine was used as a poison gas in World War I, but this is hardly relevant to students today. A scene in the film Legends of the Fall can help explain the action of a poisonous gas. Although the film is centered on the life and conflicts of a Western rancher and his sons, there is an important scene where one of the sons, Samuel (played by Henry Thomas), is incapacitated by a yellow-green gas. The scene is interleaved with an attempt by another son, Tristan (Brad Pitt), who dons a gas mask in his futile search
for Samuel. The clip illustrates how chlorine and other poisons can be relatively slow acting: in the film it is clear that Samuel is incapacitated, not killed outright, by the gas. In addition, the slow emission of a cloud of gas from an artillery shell demonstrates movement of a gas through the environment. Chemical weaponry has advanced far beyond simple gases. The film The Rock shows this, starting with the theft of nerve gas agents by mutinous soldiers who establish a base on Alcatraz and threaten the San Francisco Bay area. One dramatic and informative scene occurs when the main protagonists Stanley Goodspeed (Nicholas Cage) and John Patrick Mason (Sean Connery) first reach the weapons in their storage. As Goodspeed disassembles a weapon to cripple its guidance system he and Mason engage in a brief discussion of how such agents work. The drama can initiate a discussion with students of whether they think all chemicals have similar dangers. A third example of dangerous chemicals is given in the film Dante’s Peak. An exploding volcano is the source of the danger here. A small group of survivors led by Harry Dalton (Pierce Brosnan) attempts to flee across a lake in a metal boat. Their relief at escaping a burning town is tempered when they notice dead fish around them and, soon after, their boat begins to fizz and dissolve as a result of the acidification of the lake. This clip makes clear the way that acids can attack active metals to give off gas and also allows for a discussion of how sulfur oxides react with water to give aqueous acids. Chemicals That Save: Awakenings (8) and Lorenzo’s Oil (9) The three previous examples are all taken from fictional films. Ironically, two examples of “good” chemical substances are found in true stories. The first film in this group, Awakenings, treats the case of patients who, after surviving viral encephalitis, lapsed into a catatonic state lasting decades, engendering different diagnoses despite their similar symptoms. One doctor, Dr. William Sayer (Robin Williams), declares “you’d think that at a certain point all these atypical somethings would amount to a typical something”, and he sets off to determine the nature of the disease. A scene that is very effective in the classroom shows Sayer getting permission to treat one of his patients, Leonard Lowe (Robert DeNiro). He uses the drug L-DOPA, which had only recently been licensed to treat Parkinson disease. The scene ends with Leonard first emerging from his suspended state. An interesting sidelight of this scene is the discussion of informed consent for an experimental use of a drug, carried out between Dr. Sayer and Leonard’s mother (Ruth Nelson). A small piece of basic general chemistry—the effect of acidity on the action of a drug—is also presented. The story in Awakenings involves the use of a known drug to treat a disease that was not its original target. The discovery
JChemEd.chem.wisc.edu • Vol. 78 No. 4 April 2001 • Journal of Chemical Education
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In the Classroom
of L-DOPA is not discussed. However, the movie Lorenzo’s Oil has a long and detailed presentation about how a particular group of compounds—intermediate- to long-chain fatty acids—are both the cause of and the solution to a degenerative disease, adrenoleukodystrophy (ALD). The entire film, like Apollo 13, is an excellent introduction to several aspects of medical and chemical research, including ethics issues. These issues have also been covered by others in presentations available on the World Wide Web (10). In one clip, Lorenzo’s parents, Michaela (Susan Sarandon) and Augusto (Nick Nolte) Odone, decide to take on the task of learning the chemistry and biochemistry needed to understand why the “logical” treatment of ALD (withholding the fats that are causing the disease) does not work. A sink metaphor is the basis for their reasoning about the role of food, biosynthesis, and enzyme function in the disease, and this is an excellent example of non-chemical reasoning applied to a chemical problem. Later the pursuit of just the right inhibitor leads them to several chemical laboratories and provides an indication (though not a demonstration) of the effectiveness of painstaking fractional distillation.1 I have also used the film Apollo 13 as an example of both a chemical that threatens (carbon dioxide) and one that saves (lithium hydroxide). Besides the discussion presented by Goll and Woods on acid–base chemistry, this is also a good place for a calculation of the amount of lithium hydroxide needed to absorb the CO2 exhaled by three men in a day. Learning and Reasoning in Chemistry: Good Will Hunting (12 ) and Smoke (13 ) A strong idea that students have about chemistry when they start college is that it is difficult and obscure. Two films let one present this idea and begin a discussion to overcome it. A widely known example is in the film Good Will Hunting. The savant Will Hunting (Matt Damon) is presented as a mathematical genius, but there is also a scene where he analyzes the NMR spectrum of a complex organic molecule in a few minutes. This prompts his girlfriend Skylar (Minnie Driver) to ask how he can do such difficult things so easily. When he suggests it is fun to do organic chemistry, she asserts “no one does this for fun.” He then brings up a metaphor to suggest that for him, organic chemistry is like piano playing for a Mozart or a Beethoven. The film implies chemistry is only easy for those who can sit down and “just play”. Of course, one does not need to be a savant to do organic chemistry, and this film clip can start a discussion of how those of us who cannot “just play” can still become adept at chemistry problems. One can also probe students’ understanding of an important chemical idea, combustion, using the film Smoke. This film tells the interlocking stories of several men linked through a cigar shop. In the film’s prelude, the character Paul Benjamin (William Hurt) tells an apocryphal story about Sir Walter Raleigh’s determination of the weight of smoke. When asked how weighing smoke is possible, Paul says “It is almost like weighing someone’s soul.” He then relates how Raleigh calculated the weight of smoke by comparing the original weight of the cigar with the weight of the ashes and the cigar
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butt that remain after burning: smoke from burning cigar = original weight – (weight of ash + weight of cigar residue)
This is such a logical bit of reasoning that most students accept it outright, and those who correctly figure that the story is wrong cannot describe why. All share the common misconception that burning is decomposition, not a combination of air and fuel. This is akin to the misconception that a metal will lose weight when it oxidizes. Getting students to talk about this misconception benefits from a dialog that acknowledges the wrong answer as reasonable but shortsighted (14). It is also part of a larger effort needed to develop students’ awareness of what happens in chemical change (15), although this particular error has been shown to be extremely robust (16 ). Using Film in the Classroom: Access and Fair Use Issues The films discussed in this article are all commercial productions created for other purposes (popular entertainment). They are all available for purchase from retail outlets by institutions at relatively low prices (
