In the Classroom
Interdisciplinary Connections
edited by
Mark Alber Darlington School Rome, GA 30161
Creative Writing and Chemistry
W
Mark Alber Darlington School, 1014 Cave Spring Road, Rome, GA 30161;
[email protected] those who don’t understand science in the first place. And they Most scientists and poets would seem to agree with the may have a point. The chemistry curriculum is crowded, and character in Robert Frost’s poem “The Mending Wall”, who it is a challenge to cover the material that typically appears proclaims with satisfaction, “good fences make good neighbors” in the standard first-year chemistry syllabus. And perhaps there (1). This divergence often begins early with students sepaare those who would love to see the influence of science reduced. rating into two camps. On one side are the students who find Nevertheless, if not for lofty academic reasons, then out of science difficult and unappealing, not simply because they self-interest, scientists should attempt to bridge the divide are not mathematically inclined, but also because they find between history, art, and even poetry when possible. Making the language, concepts, and people of science abstract and this attempt will not deter those individuals who intend to alien. These students often view science as nothing more than become scientists and will go a long way toward helping those a demanding mechanical exercise that allows for little creative not scientifically inclined to view science in a more favorexpression. On the other side are the students who are comable light. fortable with mathematics and adept at manipulating symbols With all these issues in mind and a grant from the Council and other forms of abstract reasoning. However, even among of Basic Education, Rena Patton, poet and English teacher, students in the second group, it is doubtful that many appreciand I began working on a project to incorporate creative ate the role of creativity in scientific inquiry. As students move writing into my Advanced Placement Chemistry class at further along in school the gulf deepens, so that by graduate Darlington School.1 Our idea was to have students use primary school it is a rare student who takes courses outside his or texts and laboratory experiences as the basis for writing asher field. signments and in the process gain insight into the nature of There are, however, individuals who take their inspiration from more than one discipline and who are comfortable scientific discovery and the lives of scientists. Rena had already incorporating scientific ideas into their writing. Considering spent the previous summer writing poetry about physics, and specifically the fields of literature and chemistry, we find writers her experience served as a starting point as we considered how from Lucretius to Goethe and in our own time Roald to involve students in writing about chemistry. We used Rena’s Hoffmann who combine ideas from art and science in their poem “X = k log w”, which was inspired by the life and work work. But in spite of William Wordsworth’s prediction in of Ludwig Boltzmann, as an early model of the type of writing 1800 that a time would come when “the remotist discoveries of we wanted the students to attempt (5). the chemist, the botonist, or mineralogist, will be as proper objects of the X = k log w by Rena Patton poet’s art as any upon which it can be Everywhere, everywhere blue as electrons in a water bath, employed”, by 1944 Aldous Huxley this entropy, the broken chair, or the steady flame of bunsen gas. could comment that with few excepThe book whose pages tear. Why, Then they fell to frog again tions the gauntlet had not been acyesterday in the woods tending the business of insects— cepted and that poetry continued to here in the middle of June making death into purple flight. consider a narrow range of ideas (2, 3). I saw a leaf yellow Even so, in recent years, Richard as a banana. Oh Ludwig, that you could have seen! Dawkins, best known for his books on And down near the stream Staid your own dark hand. You should evolution, has reasserted Wordworth’s in the gravel road have claim and expressed the opinion “that a smashed frog, flat and black slept the victor’s sleep beneath your the spirit of wonder which led Blake as a silhouette, Viennese stone. to Christian mysticism, Keats to a mere shadow You who knew the elegance of disorder Arcadian myth and Yeats to Fenians of his former self. the perfect grace of X, the balance and fairies, is the very same spirit that And considering all this, of =, a cross, multiplied by k, moves great scientists” (4 ). I too was tending which may stand for kiss or karma Whether these ideas are correct is toward despair. or, sadly, something more. open for discussion; but most chemWhen sudden lightThat, despite the inclination, ists, no matter what they think of littwinkling, periwinkle wings! to dissolution, find— erature personally, probably don’t see litfive butterflies waved, settled, Oh, Ludwig— their wings folded like grey fans, everywhere, erature and poetry as having a role in like hands of prayer, in woods, in frog, in air, chemical education. Some may even blended with granite gravel. absolute and fair feel that the introduction of such a As I drew near, they the mercy of equation. topic into the study of chemistry is an flew into a blue flurry, attempt to subvert the discipline by 478
Journal of Chemical Education • Vol. 78 No. 4 April 2001 • JChemEd.chem.wisc.edu
In the Classroom
On Reading the Letter of the Secretary of the Lunacy Board of Scotland Concerning Archibald Scott Couper by Rena Patton “He is described (by his father) as ‘moody and mysterious in demeanor’ sometimes incoherent and excited.” Admitted July, 1859.
Lost his mind over science? Over a line connecting atoms in a design? I’ve known some over money. Over being ‘anticipated’ in publication by Kekulé? What can one say? Young Scotsman, probably Presbyterian, young thinker of Kirkintilloch, obscurity is your destiny? Your professor Wurtz merely fulfilling some cosmic plan with his inexplicable delay in offering your paper to the academy too late? Immortality thwarted by a reluctance to publish or fate? “Excited” states the letter from the Lunacy Board of Edinborough. Indeed. Here the mind that opened the organic chemistry book. “Look,” he said, “it’s like a language,
To engage the students in this project we needed more than the brief biographical notes contained in most textbooks. If possible we wanted to use primary writings by the scientists themselves to personalize the process of scientific discovery. To help us locate these materials we contacted Ted Benfey at the Chemical Heritage Foundation in Philadelphia, and he generously suggested that we spend a week at the foundation gathering materials for our project.2 With Benfey’s assistance we were able to study and collect numerous resources from both the Chemical Heritage Foundation and the University of Pennsylvania, which has an extensive collection of scientific texts. Benfey also suggested that we consider using the story of Archibald Scott Couper in our project. According to documents that Benfey shared with us, it appeared that Couper had anticipated much of the structural organic work that eventually became associated with August Kekulé. But for reasons not entirely clear, Couper’s work had not been published, and in apparent despair he turned from
After Losing My Thoughts You would, would you? Burn down my house Sending into smoke my words, My thoughts floating like so much phlogiston Above the shambles of my house. I executed temperance, Acting with prudence against your ignorance, And yet you attack me Me and my French friends In much the same way They stormed the Bastille.
a literature of carbonated words we can’t read, combinates without clues, rendering us illiterate. But suppose”— ideas blossoming like a rose—suppose relationship, suppose connection”—draw a dotted line— “…suppose, like linguistics, structure, chemical grammar” —draw a continuous line—And at Couper’s golden key, open, so to say, a chemical OED. “I go back to the elements themselves,” opening line of the impeded paper, bearing the weight of prophecy, divining, not defining carbon breakdown. That the mind of the man who by leverage of pure philosophical thought –never mind eternity in the lab where he might have made some Faustian exchange, not of soul but brain, promised for the secret of carbonic chain— that such affinity for structure should find its own mind broken— the tetrahedral irony of “Incoherent” unspoken.
science and eventually ended up in an asylum in Scotland (6 ).W We were intrigued by this little-known story, and while we were at the Chemical Heritage foundation Rena wrote the poem above based on Couper’s life. That fall, after returning from Philadelphia, we began trying out our ideas with my Advanced Placement Chemistry class. We felt that these students, although busy with the demands of the AP curriculum, seemed most suited for this type of interdisciplinary assignment. Our first goal was to accustom students to the idea of writing poems about chemistry, and with this in mind we started with some easy exercises. Several writing assignments were based on laboratory experiments and were done in class at the end of a laboratory period. Another short assignment was based on an article that had appeared in this Journal about writing limericks in science (7). We gave the students examples from the article and let them write on any topic in chemistry. They seemed to enjoy the assignment, and several came up with humorous limericks of their own.
by Elizabeth Derryberry
I thought you believed that Action to be sedition? I speak only truth, But you speak violence. Only reason and argument Can we address each other with. Doing otherwise, you convince me that I am right. You have nothing else to produce. Imagination I follow, and you—persecution. look upon what I have left Knowledge of air—Seltzer.
See those I have known I call my friend—Benjamin Franklin. But in my mind you have left only Hate. Violence. Curses. Dignified I leave the world Sparing until the last My family from their cries You, though, create those cries Seeking out tragedy. I return you blessings for your curses.
JChemEd.chem.wisc.edu • Vol. 78 No. 4 April 2001 • Journal of Chemical Education
479
In the Classroom Studying gases it seems to me To be all PV = nRT But when switched all around It is quite profound How from that you can get density.
After the students became comfortable with the idea of writing poetry in a chemistry class we moved on to a more challenging assignment. We distributed copies of the historical documents that had inspired Rena’s poem on Couper and discussed how she had incorporated these materials into her poem. Next we gave the students copies of the historical documents we had gathered on Joseph Priestley, which included letters between Priestley and Benjamin Franklin and a copy of a letter from Priestley to the inhabitants of Birmingham, England, rebuking them for burning down his house and laboratory. We then asked the students to write a poem about Joseph Priestley using Rena’s poem about Archibald Scott Couper as a model (“After Losing My Thoughts” by Elizabeth Derryberry is an example). The final exercise was to write a poem based on a scientific theory. As an example of this type of writing we used the poem “The Devil Teaches Thermodynamics”, by Nobel Laureate Roald Hoffmann (8). We had met with Hoffmann at Cornell University and during the visit had videotaped an interview in which he discussed his interest in art, literature, and science and his own efforts to write creatively about chemistry. We also taped Hoffmann reading “The Devil Teaches Thermodynamics”, which we used to introduce the assignment. The students were then asked to select a theory and write a poem using Hoffmann’s poem as a model (“Quantum Electrons” by Adam Marcus is an example). After four years of working on this project we feel that we achieved our goal of helping our students appreciate the human creative side of science. Through their research and writing students became more aware of the personal struggles Quantum Electrons
by Adam Marcus
When I shoot out electrons individually, they create a flat even, distribution. But when I send multiple shots of these subatomic particles, I create an uneven distribution, like that of waves. My electrons are not pure matter and not pure energy, but something in between.
480
that scientists endure in attempting to understand the physical world. Students for the most part were enthusiastic and openminded. Several wrote about this project in their college application essays as one of their most interesting academic experiences. From a practical perspective, the demands on the students were fairly minimal. Several of the introductory exercises were done at the conclusion of a short lab and didn’t require any time outside of class. The major assignment on Joseph Priestley, which was coordinated with the study of gases, required one class period to introduce and was completed by students over the course of a week outside of class along with normal homework assignments. The second major assignment, which involved writing a poem about a scientific theory, had a research component, which received one grade, and a writing component, which received a separate grade. In all cases the writing grade was based primarily on effort and counted the same as a quiz grade. Writing poetry about chemistry is certainly not for everyone, but we do believe that finding ways to draw connections between chemistry and other disciplines is worthwhile. We encourage teachers who have developed interesting and successful methods of making these connections to use this column to share their ideas. We would also like to thank Roald Hoffmann, Arnold Thackray, and Ted Benfey for taking the time to help and encourage us with our project. A videotape containing examples and interviews is available and can be obtained by contacting me at the address listed. WSupplemental
Material An abbreviated account of the Couper story is available as supplemental material in this issue of JCE Online. Notes 1. Council for Basic Education, 1319 F Street, N.W., Suite 900, Washington, DC 20004-1152; 202/347-4171. 2. Chemical Heritage Foundation, 315 Chestnut Street, Philadelphia, PA 19106.
Literature Cited 1. Frost, R. “Mending Wall”; in The Poetry of Robert Frost; Lathem, E. C., Ed.; Holt, Rinehart and Winston: New York, 1936. 2. Wordsworth, W. Lyrical Ballads, 1798 Wordsworth & Coleridge, 2nd ed.; Owen, W. J. B., Ed.; Oxford University Press: London, 1969. 3. Huxley, A. On the Margin: Notes and Essays; Chatto and Windus: London, 1971. 4. Dawkins, R. Unweaving the Rainbow; Hougton Mifflin: Boston, 1998. 5. Bronowski, J. The Ascent of Man; Little, Brown and Company: Boston, 1974. According to Bronowski, “[Boltzmann] … at the age of sixty-two, feeling isolated and defeated, at the very moment when atomic doctrine was going to win, he thought all was lost, and he committed suicide. What remains to commemorate him is his immortal formula, S = K log W, carved on his grave.” 6. A detailed account of the Kekulé–Couper story within the context of the history of 19th-century organic chemistry can be found in Benfey, O. T. From Vital Force to Structural Formulas; Chemical Heritage Foundation: Philadelphia, PA, 1992. 7. Williams, F. D. J. Chem. Educ. 1995, 72, 1123. 8. Hoffmann, R.; Torrence, V. Chemistry Imagined; Smithsonian Institution Press: Washington, DC, 1993; p 53.
Journal of Chemical Education • Vol. 78 No. 4 April 2001 • JChemEd.chem.wisc.edu
