Commentary pubs.acs.org/jchemeduc
Book and Media Recommendations: Our Changing Planet and the Impact of Words Cheryl Baldwin Frech* Department of Chemistry, University of Central Oklahoma, Edmond, Oklahoma 73034-5209, United States ABSTRACT: Summer reading recommendations for five books are provided. The Sixth Extinction by Elizabeth Kolbert and Flight Behavior by Barbara Kingsolver both describe changes on our planet that may be due to human activity. Three books deal with words: The Secret Life of Words is an audiobook on the changing English language; Quiet by Susan Cain explores the world of introverts; and Chemical Poems by Mario Markus presents one poem for each element. KEYWORDS: General Public, Environmental Chemistry, History/Philosophy, Interdisciplinary/Multidisciplinary, Public Understanding/Outreach, Communication/Writing, Descriptive Chemistry, Periodicity/Periodic Table
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Anthropocene Epoch into curricula and to illuminate chemistry’s contributions (both positive and negative) to changes on Earth. Kolbert presents the five previous major extinction events. She includes a simple chart plotting biodiversity versus time before present that shows the sharp dips corresponding to the major extinctions. The most recent extinction occurred some 66 million years ago and resulted in the loss of nearly all nonavian dinosaurs. The associated iridium fingerprint of this event led father and son Alvarez to hypothesize in 1980 that a meteor impact was responsible. In 2010 a group of geologists supported a tie between the Chicxulub crater off the Yucatán coast to this extinction. Kolbert does a good job of elucidating the construct of extinction itself, which developed in the 19th century. Just as the discovery of radioactivity confounded the pursuit of a model of the atom in the early 20th century, the concept of extinction complicated the development of the theories of both evolution and modern geology. Chapters on modern-era extinctions (auks, golden frogs) are interspersed with chapters on ancient extinctions (ammonites, mastodons). The effects of climate change are explored in chapters on ocean acidification and the slow but steady “movement” of tree species to cooler latitudes. One chapter describes what is known about extinct human species, including the Neanderthals, Denisovans, and Homo floresiensis, the hobbits. Students in our courses may think that chemistry knowledge is downloaded into their textbooks or found online and simply persists, unchanging. Chemists who have contributed to the body of science knowledge know that change is constant. Even a cursory examination of the chemistry books from which you have taught will reveal changes in models and terminology. Educate yourself about the Anthropocene and help chemistry find its place in this era.
hemistry educators: Got books? Revitalize your courses and expand your thinking by reading (or listening to) a good book this summer.
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THE SIXTH EXTINCTION: AN UNNATURAL HISTORY Earlier this year I started hearing buzz about a book entitled The Sixth Extinction.1 I was puzzled, because I was thinking of two earlier books of the same title: Terry Glavin’s 2006 book,2 subtitled Journeys Among the Lost and Lef t Behind, and Richard Leakey and Roger Lewin’s 1999 book,3 subtitled Patterns of Life and the Future of Humankind, which I reviewed together in this Journal in 2009.4 Elizabeth Kolbert’s 2014 book, The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History (Figure 1), introduces readers to the concept of the “Anthropocene”, a term that was not in general use when the earlier books were published. The Anthropocene refers to our current geological epoch, one that is marked by human impact on the planet. A recent editorial in this Journal5 called for chemical educators to incorporate the concept of the
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FLIGHT BEHAVIOR Barbara Kingsolver, who is trained as a biologist, often incorporates environmental themes into her fiction. Discontented housewife Dellarobia Turnbow is the protagonist in
Figure 1. The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History1 cover image provided by Henry Holt and Company, Inc. and reproduced with permission. © 2014 American Chemical Society and Division of Chemical Education, Inc.
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Rather than lament the decline of the use of “proper” English, Curzan examines how the English language changes over time. In the lectures, Curzan takes us from Old English through Old Norse, the huge number of words borrowed from French, to the Latin and Greek roots of many English words. She then presents an alphabet of sample words borrowed from Arabic to Zulu. Other lectures cover geographic word choices, highlighting both U.S. regional differences and those between other Englishspeaking countries. You will learn about strange English plurals, weird pronunciations compared to spellings (colonel stands out here), intensifiers (“wicked cool”), and discourse markers (oh, so, and now). The fun really begins with lectures on slang, vulgarities, terms imported from sports, business, politics, and war, and words about sex. Additional lectures highlight the words that have been incorporated from the Internet and texting (LOL, OMG, YOLO), taboo words, and words that are borrowed from other languages because English has not an appropriate word to use, such as Schadenf reude. Each Great Courses CD set includes a book that summarizes the chapters, which is helpful if you need clarification on a point, or wish to find something that you heard earlier. I loaned The Secret Life of Words to another chemistry colleague and various family members and friends, and it was many months before the set was returned to me. Everyone raved about enjoying the series.
Kingsolver’s 2012 novel, Flight Behavior (Figure 2).6 When millions of monarch butterflies show up on the Turnbow’s
Figure 2. Flight Behavior: A Novel6 cover image provided by Harper Perennial and reproduced with permission.
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Tennessee property, the small community is mystified and unsure how to proceed. As word of the mysterious appearance spreads, the local economy is jolted by the hordes of tourists who arrive to gawk. Property owners and environmentalists are pitted against one another because the butterfly covered hillside is scheduled to be logged. When lepidopterist Ovid Byron and his team of biologists show up to study the butterflies, Dellarobia becomes fascinated with the work of the scientists. She takes a job working with them, and her world expands inexorably. You can read Flight Behavior as a first-rate work of fiction: the book received excellent reviews and several awards. Kingsolver’s writing is rich and her portrait of rural Appalachia and its inhabitants is vivid and realistic. Her portrayal of the scientific team is accurate. You might also read Flight Behavior as a cautionary tale about the unexpected consequences of the Anthropocene Epoch.
QUIET: THE POWER OF INTROVERTS IN A WORLD THAT CAN’T STOP TALKING Perhaps in return for the loan of The Secret Life of Words, my colleague loaned me his copy of Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking (Figure 3).9 As chemistry
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THE SECRET LIFE OF WORDS As an academic with a long commute, many of the books that I “read” are actually audiobooks that I listen to in the car. When my sister-in-law started giving me her already-listened-to Great Courses audiobook sets, I was nonplussed. Why would I listen to another professor’s lectures as I drive to and from my university? Eventually, a day came when I had no book credits on my Audible account and no time to go to the library to check out a book on CD, so I relented and put in the first disk of The Secret Life of Words: English Words and Their Origins7 by Anne Curzan. I was just a tiny bit put off by the applause that accompanies the beginning and end of each minilecture. (Students do not, as a rule, applaud in chemistry courses, except for perhaps the most spectacular of demonstration successes.) However, I was quickly hooked. Curzan, professor of English at the University of Michigan, is a scholar of the English language and sociolinguistics. She learns a lot about words from her students, as do we all. Just this semester, a student in laboratory stepped away from an experiment in frustration, exclaiming that she was feeling “salty”. To me, this was an unfamiliar usage of a familiar word. I turned to the Urban Dictionary,8 which defined salty as “angry, agitated, or upset”, and I had learned a new expression.
Figure 3. Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Cannot Stop Talking9 cover image provided by Broadway Books, an imprint of Crown Publishing Group, a division of the Random House Publishing Group and reproduced with permission.
educators, we make our living with words, both written and spoken. Many of us are also introverts, often preferring to work alone in our office or lab. Susan Cain, herself an introvert, was once a lawyer on Wall Street, where she struggled with the environment of extroversion. Cain takes readers through an exploration of introversion from a cultural point of view. There is a quick quiz, in case you are not sure if you are an introvert or not. She explores the concepts of introversion and extroversion in society and with historical vignettes. She focuses on the difficulties that introverted students 952
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Do not lay hands on Tin, its shape. The inner crystals cry out, anticipate the cold, the collapse to dust. Soldiers in the snow, scouts in endless ice without bowls and buttons, vanished with the music of broken organs. Whisky in Miami, coca leaves in mines. (Written by Mario Markus and reprinted with permission from Dos Madres Press.) The book includes a short “Chemistry for Beginners” section, plus an extensive glossary and references. I recommend this handsome book for anyone who is a fan of elements and the periodic table as well as those chemists and educators who are interested in exploring the connections between science and the arts.
may face in the classroom as educators move toward more group work, discussion sessions, and oral presentations. Chapter 9 is subtitled “When should you act more extroverted?” Some introverts who succeed at acting like extroverts score high on psychological tests for “self-monitoring”. I, and many chemistry colleagues whom I have known over the years, may fall into this category of high self-monitoring introverts because we can modify our behavior to fit the situation. A typical day for many faculty members includes acting as an extrovert for a while and talking with the students in a class and then a return to introversion with time to regroup in the office alone. The later chapters of Quiet are somewhat prescriptive, but educators will find much to ponder after reading this book. You will think differently about those quieter students and about your interactions with the people in your life.
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CHEMICAL POEMS: ONE ON EACH ELEMENT Chilean-born Mario Markus is a professor at a Max Planck Institute in Germany. He spent a year attending high school in Bartlesville, Oklahoma. His book, Chemical Poems: One on Each Element (Figure 4),10 reflects this broad geographic diversity. As
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AUTHOR INFORMATION
Corresponding Author
*E-mail:
[email protected]. Notes
The authors declare no competing financial interest.
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REFERENCES
(1) Kolbert, E. The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History; Henry Holt: New York, 2014. (2) Glavin, T. The Sixth Extinction: Journeys Among the Lost and Left Behind; Thomas Donne Books, St. Martin’s Press: New York, 2006. (3) Leakey, R.; Lewin, R. The Sixth Extinction: Patterns of Life and the Future of Humankind; Anchor, Random House: New York, 1996. (4) Coppola, B.; Frech, C.; Harris, H.; Pagni, R. J. Chem. Educ. 2009, 86, 792. (5) Mahaffey, P. J. Chem. Educ. 2014, 91, 463−465. (6) Kingsolver, B. Flight Behavior; Harper: New York, 2012. (7) Curzan, A. The Secret Life of Words; The Great Courses: Chantilly, VA, 2012; audiobook on 18 CDs. (8) Urban Dictionary. http://www.urbandictionary.com/ (accessed Jun 2014). (9) Cain, S. Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking; Broadway Books (Random House): New York, 2012. (10) Markus, M. Chemical Poems: One for Each Element; Dos Madres Press: Loveland, OH, 2013.
Figure 4. Chemical Poems: One on Each Element10 cover image provided by Dos Madres Press and reproduced with permission.
promised, Markus provides a poem and a brief description of every element, up to and including element 118 (ununoctium, Uuo). Markus even throws in some bonus elements: undiscovered elements 119 through element 122, plus element 126 (unbihexium, Ubh), element 164 (unhexaquadium, Uhq, also known as eka-eka-lead), and element 210 (biunnilium, Bun). The descriptions of each element are less than a page long. Each includes physical characteristics, historical commentary, and a few unique bits of information about the properties of the elements or where it is found. Many of the poems appear to have been written directly from the narrative. Here is the poem for tin, one of my favorite elements: Tin Clear tones of organ pipes, as smooth as the flatness of glass or a bronze Egyptian mirror. 953
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