Chemical Education Today edited by
Cheryl Baldwin Frech University of Central Oklahoma Edmond, OK 73034-5209
Accessible Elements: Teaching Science Online and at a Distance Edited by Dietmar Kennepohl and Lawton Shaw Athabasca University Press: Edmonton, AB Canada. 2010. xxv þ 282 pp. ISBN 978-1-897425-47-3 (paper) $39.95. (Also available as an ebook: ISBN 978-1-897425-48-0.) reviewed by Scott Smidt
If you attend a conference on science teaching (in biology or chemistry, at least), you are likely to find several workshops or sessions devoted to online courses listed in the schedule. As demand for access to higher education increases, it seems likely that pressure to offer introductory chemistry courses online will increase as well. When that happens (if it has not already), the instructors tasked with teaching those classes will be glad their school library has a copy of Accessible Elements. Intended as an overview of current best practices, the editors of Accessible Elements envision the book as a blend of both theoretical and applied information. Sometimes this approach produces hybrid vigor, and sometimes the product is a jack-of-alltrades but master of none. Given that the specifics of setting up an online course will vary from institution to institution, a blend probably is preferable to a simple “how-to” approach. Although the book focuses primarily on chemistry, a few chapters address physics and earth science topics. The references listed at the end of each chapter will provide a useful window into the distance education literature for those needing to see beyond the walls of their campus. The book is organized into three sections. The first section includes four chapters focused on the theoretical aspects of learning at a distance. Two chapters in this section deal with various types of interactions that students experience (for example, studentstudent, student-content, or student-teacher) and how these interactions differ between on-campus and online courses. A third chapter outlines the need for flexibility in higher education and provides models to increase it through online and distance offerings. The second section examines a major friction point for offering science classes online: laboratories. The five chapters in this section provide an overview of ways laboratories for distance education have been addressed: kits mailed to students, kitchen chemistry, “residential” programs in which students come to campus (or a satellite site) for several weekends of labs, virtual labs, and remote-controlled labs. Several chapters include summary data on student performance and student confidence with lab techniques. The remaining four chapters comprise a section on logistics. Overviews of distance education programs in Bangladesh and the University of the South Pacific present a glimpse of difficulties faced in other parts of the world and how those challenges are overcome. (Whatever logistical challenges we encounter, few of us will ever face a three-day journey to reach an outlying island campus. We should all count our blessings.) Another chapter provides a detailed cost r 2010 American Chemical Society and Division of Chemical Education, Inc.
_
comparison of different delivery methods for chemistry laboratories at Athabasca University in Alberta, Canada. Although much good information is included in sections two and three, I was a bit disappointed that neither addressed liability. I suppose this is an issue for which the details will differ from place to place, but what are the common legal concerns with sending chemicals and glassware to students? Are they different than face-to-face laboratories? Will I need that professional umbrella insurance policy? In the end, Accessible Elements provides a bird's-eye view of the issues facing distance education in the sciences, with a slight emphasis on laboratories. This seems particularly useful given the abundance of books aimed at teaching online in general, and the dearth of books focused explicitly on the lab sciences. It will not be the only book you need to consult when preparing an online course, but you will find it useful. Scott Smidt teaches chemistry at Laramie County Community College, Albany County Campus, Laramie, WY 82070; ssmidt@ lccc.wy.edu. DOI: 10.1021/ed101089h Published on Web 12/10/2010
The Disappearing Spoon: And Other True Tales of Madness, Love, and the History of the World from the Periodic Table of the Elements by Sam Kean Little, Brown and Company: New York, 2010. 391 pp. ISBN978-0316051644 (cloth). $24.99. reviewed by Robert E. Buntrock
In many cases, scientists and science educators recall becoming fascinated with science in general and chemistry in particular by observing things like mercury globules. Sam Kean is no exception, except that he studied physics and is a science writer. Kean's travelogue of the periodic table covers a lot of ground and his analysis groups the elements in interesting and sometimes whimsical collections. For example, Chapter 5, “Elements in Times of War” covers bromine, osmium, chlorine, molybdenum, tungsten, scandium, tantalum, and niobium. The rationale and stories behind this grouping are left for the reader to discover, and cover history, uses, and links to the evolution of the periodic table. In this chapter he comes down hard on the work of Fritz Haber from his nitrogen fixation process to his contributions to chemical warfare. Chapter 6 is titled “Completing the Table...with a Bang” and covers promethium, plutonium, and cobalt. Personalities involved include the tragic Henry Mosley, who determined the importance of atomic number to the true arrangement of the periodic table before he left to serve in WW I and was killed at Gallipoli.
pubs.acs.org/jchemeduc
_
Vol. 88 No. 2 February 2011
_
Journal of Chemical Education
143
Chemical Education Today
However, Kean's casual, almost “flip” style leads to some errors or misinterpretation of chemical and physical science. In general, properties of the elements are often either applied to chemical compounds of the elements or vice versa. These misinterpretations are especially evident in Chapter 5: bromine was deemed unsuitable as a war gas and apparently was never used, but Kean states that bromine was used in the form of lachrymators and tear gases. These are typically brominesubstituted organic compounds, not bromine itself. The variable toxicity of mercury and mercury compounds are not distinguished. The significance of the stability of nitrogen gas compared to compounds of nitrogen is not mentioned at all, leading to description of the Oklahoma City truck bomb as “fertilizer distilled [sic] bombs”. Other reviewers have already pointed out that, although there is extensive discussion of chemistry in the book, the word “chemistry” per se is rarely used. In many instances, the term “periodic table” is used instead. The book is an entertaining romp through a good deal of the history and application of science (more properly, technology, although the distinction is never mentioned) for the general public but also students and scientists. However, all readers should be aware of the many errors and misconceptions, a few of which are cited above. I would recommend this book primarily as a good read but not for course work. However, there might be pedagogical value in using portions for scientific history, relevance of chemistry, or even searching for the errors and misconceptions as a class exercise. Robert Buntrock is a ( semi)retired chemist living in Orono, ME; Buntrock Associates, Orono, Maine 04473; buntrock16@ myfairpoint.net.
biomolecules;including comets, lightning, and hydrothermal vents;and discusses some of the basic challenges confronting scientists to understand the origins of life. In addition, Chapter 10 presents an extremely abbreviated history of synthesis that may be useful in undergraduate organic chemistry courses. For the graduate educator, Chapters 2-8 work well as a unit and, if supplemented by additional materials, could provide the backbone for a graduate course on the origins of life. These chapters provide an interesting survey of the most recent thinking on the problems surrounding the genesis of life on earth. Of particular interest are the unsolved mystery of the pre-RNA world (“an 'event horizon' beyond which it is difficult to see”) and the problem of the origin of chirality in biological systems. Overall, this book is a collection of excellent chapters; unfortunately, it is not an excellent collection of chapters. As a whole, this book ultimately fails to follow even the vaguest unifying theme, and does not bother attempting a broader synthesis of the material presented. Although the Introduction gamely tries to tie each chapter to the idea of “evolution”, which is defined in an extraordinarily broad sense encompassing any complex and changing system, the book fails to provide any synthesis of the “general principles of emergent complexity” that are supposedly deducible from its varied chapters. Indeed, chapters covering, for example, the use of boron isotopes to chart pH in distant geological periods, or the modern development of (barely) biomimetic nanotechnology, strain even the most generous understanding of “evolution” and bear no discernible relation to each other. The best collections provide not only a unifying theme, but also an overarching synthesis and continuity between chapters. Nothing of the kind is to be found here. Joel F. Dillard is an attorney in Washington, DC; joel.f.dillard@ gmail.com.
DOI: 10.1021/ed101094h Published on Web 11/30/2010
DOI: 10.1021/ed101091f Published on Web 02/12/2010 Chemical Evolution II: From the Origins of Life to Modern Society, 1st edition edited by Lori Zaikowski, Jon M. Friedrich, and S. Russell Seidel.
Absolutely Small: How Quantum Theory Explains Our Everyday World
American Chemical Society: Washington, DC (distributed by
by Michael D. Fayer Amacom (American Management Association): New York, 2010. 383 pp. ISBN 978-0814414880 (cloth). $;24.00.
Oxford University Press: New York). 2009. 362 pp. ISBN 978-0841269804 (cloth). $150.00.
reviewed by Hal Harris
reviewed by Joel F. Dillard
Chemical Evolution II: From the Origins of Life to Modern Society is a collection of peer-reviewed chapters that includes an extraordinarily wide range of material. Although it is doubtful that this book will find practical use as a textbook, many chapters contained in this volume would likely be useful to educators ranging from advanced high school biology and chemistry to various upper-level graduate courses. Two chapters in particular may be of interest to high school educators. The final chapter, by S. R. Palumbi, discusses the threats posed by the way chemical and pharmaceutical industries are transforming biological evolution. And, for the ambitious chemistry teacher, the second chapter, by H. J. Cleaves and A. Lazcano, reviews current theories of the prebiotic origin of 144
Journal of Chemical Education
_
Vol. 88 No. 2 February 2011
_
“Things are not what they seem” could be the most important lesson of the quantum chemistry courses that many of us teach. I know from personal experience that our students are so busy trying to remember calculus and work problems that they often fail to appreciate how profoundly the quantum world differs from ordinary experience. The title refers to the criterion by which one can judge whether a quantum description is necessary; if it is impossible to measure a quantity without substantially changing it, then it is “absolutely small” and the only adequate model will be a quantized one. Michael Fayer, a distinguished Professor at Stanford University, starts with one of the troubling examples of the strangeness of quantum phenomena: Schrodinger's Cat. He uses it as to forewarn the reader that quantum systems display weirdness
pubs.acs.org/jchemeduc
_
r 2010 American Chemical Society and Division of Chemical Education, Inc.
Chemical Education Today
that defies intuition. He then lays the foundation for what is to come, by providing a lucid explanation of the photoelectric effect and providing a tutorial chapter on the properties of waves. Having endured innumerable botched explanations of the Uncertainty Principle, it was a pleasure to read Fayer's chapter on the subject, in which he uses a wave packet description to do it well. This is one of the places in which the claim that little mathematics is required of the reader is a slight stretch of the truth. While there are no equations in the text, there are numerous graphs that clarify the concepts but also require more sophistication than the man-in-thestreet is likely to bring to his reading. There are other places where a science-naive person would be challenged. With preliminaries covered in the first seven chapters, much of the rest of the book resembles the order of subjects that one usually finds in a quantum chemistry textbook, such as the one that Fayer himself has written (1). The particle in a box is too powerful a model to be omitted, and Fayer likens the particle to a racquetball in a quantum court. He then builds from the simplest atom (hydrogen), through multiple-electron systems, the covalent bond
r 2010 American Chemical Society and Division of Chemical Education, Inc.
_
and hydrogen bonding, to the consequences of multiple bonding. For this, he uses the example of trans-fats in nutrition, and ties the infrared spectrum of carbon dioxide to global warming. The special quantum stabilization known as aromaticity gets a chapter, as does a discussion of how quantum effects determine whether a material is an insulator, conductor, or semiconductor. A nice summary chapter, “Think Quantum” ends this very appealing book. While it is nowhere near being a textbook, it is a little bit much for the everyman but perfect for many readers of JCE and our students. Literature Cited 1. Fayer, M. Elements of Quantum Mechanics; Oxford University Press: New York, 2001.
Hal Harris is in the Chemistry Department at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, MO 63121;
[email protected]. DOI: 10.1021/ed101084k Published on Web 09/12/2010
pubs.acs.org/jchemeduc
_
Vol. 88 No. 2 February 2011
_
Journal of Chemical Education
145
