BITTER WATERS Following the course of the Amargosa River, the longest "dry" river in the world, into Death Valley. At those infrequent times, following cloudbursts of terrific intensity, water roars down its channel, only to sink in the sands farther down. In 1849 it saved the lives of one party of emigrants, who named it "Amargosa." meaning "bitter waters." I t is over 150 miles to the mountains in the hazy distance.
STUDIES IN THE MINERAL AND CHEMICAL RESOURCES OF THE MOJAVE DESERT. III.* THE INSPECTION TRIP LOVEJOY TURRILL, GLENDALE JUNIOR COLLEGE, GLENDALE. CALIFORNIA PARK
America is blessed with an abundance of two items of interest to those engaged in chemical education, &z., a weulth of natural resources of a chemical nature, and a diversified list of industries employing chemicals or chemical processes in the flow sheets of manufacture. Professors qf chemistry may well ponder over the problem of maintaining and even increasing classroom interest i n subject matter; they may indeed develop a professional attitude toward the subject by the inclusion of inspection trifis to natural deposits and chemical industries as a regular part of the school firogram. Suggestionsfor the organization of the inspection trip are included herewith, with directions for the lengthy excursion lasting a week, and traversinga thousand miles.
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Chemical Industries in Southern California The Mojave Desert Area, comprising some 30,000 square miles of Southeastern California and Southern Nevada, constitutes a portion of the "hack country" of Los Angeles. It is a region richly favored by Nature in chemical depositions (1). Within the metropolitan area of the city itself, including Hollywood, Glendale, Pasadena, and the beaches, one may find several hundred industries employing chemicals or using chemical processes in the plant. This total is being increased in large measure every year by the opening up of branch factories of large eastern concerns on the coast, and by the establishment of new iudustri&. An abundance of water and electric power, the "white coal" of the Sierramevada Mountains, cheap labor, trackage, rail and water transportation facilities and industrial sites, an all-year laboring climate and an ever-increasing supply of capital are partly responsible for this. Another reason is the tremendous increase in the consuming power of the people of Southern California, those residing in Los Angeles City and County alone numbering over 2,200,000. Most of these are concentrated in the metropolitan area. The Inspection Trip Both regions, the desert and the metropolitan districts-one with its immense chemical depositions and its modern chemical plants, the other with a diversified list of examples of chemical industries-constitute a fertile ground for the energetic instructor of chemistry who wishes to include in his syllabus something besides the old cut-and-dried topics and texts, lecture demonstrations, collateral reading, quizzes and laboratory problems, the usual number of slides, and the occasional drafting of a special speaker from industry or college for a night lecture. The inspection trip, weekly, * Part I appeared in J CXEM.EDUC., 9, 1318-39 (Aug., 1932); Part 2, ibid., 9, 153&52 (Sept.. 1932). 2041
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monthly, semi-annually, or annually can then be organized withvery profitable results. The plan of the University of Chicago to include a talking picture on some appropriate subject once or twice a semester deserves careful consideration as a syllabus adjunct. Saturday Morning Inspection Trips When chemical industries are close by, within fifteen to thirty minutes drive of the campus, an inspection trip may well he substituted for a threehour laboratory period once or twice a semester. Usually, however, such trips can better be scheduled on Saturday mornings. A highly organized excursion may then be included in the Christmas or spring vacation period. Professor E. E. Chandler, head of the department of chemistry of Occidental College, employs the Saturday morning method extensively. He and his students have "covered'' practically all of the principal chemical plants operating in the metropolitan area of Los Angeles. He makes as many as a dozen Saturday morning inspection trips per semester, and is thoroughly "sold" on the idea as a method of stimulating interest and increasing professionalism in the student's attitude toward his major. History of Inspection Trips The idea of the inspection trip is not new. It has been used by professors for over fifty years in American an$ European colleges and universities, and is extensively used today by high-school teachers as well. Pioneering pedagogues of two decades ago had alreaay blazed a trail. Sociology instructors of 1910 took their classes to fertile fields for sociological study, to jails, reformatories, divorce courts, the slums, to social service institutions. Engineering classes inspected bridges, dams, canals, railroad construction, buildings built and in the process of being built and engineering projects of all kinds; a few chemistry men took care to show their classes those industries where the laws of the science were actually being obeyed by a corporation which was showing something besides red ink on the hooks; botany, forestry, geology, biology, and geography instructors definitely scheduled, where conditions permitted, "field trips," where the facts of the science were being daily demonstrated by Nature. One of the longest inspection trips ever programmed by an educational institution was sponsored by the Geology Department of Princeton University a few semesters ago-an excursion for their majors into the Rockies of Western Canada, covering a reported total distance of over 5000 miles. The Classroom and Its External Environment The progressive instructor is not content to teach facts and laws alone as they are presented in textbook or syllabus. He feels the need to tie in
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that book knowledge with actual states and conditions as found in the world at large, the environment into which his students will shortly be thrown by graduation. Man's eternal conquest of Nature is not carried on in the laboratory alone, or under the microscope's eyepiece, or in the drafting room of the engineering office. A definite connection must be established between classroom lectures and the actual state of affairson the other side of the educational fence. And where Mahomet cannot go to the mountain, then the mountain must go to Mahomet, in the cellulose acetate form. For isolated inland schools, far from metropolitan centers, the motion picture, or later, the talking picture, must come to the classroom and bring the story, pictorially complete. A Philosophy of Chemical Education . Changing ideals in educational processes call for new and improved methods. The Twentieth Century pedagogue is supremely interested in the training of the plastic mind of adolescent youth. One phase of the problem is the maintenance of an active interest not only in sub.ject matter, but also in the subject itself. In science courses this is made easier because science, per se, is interesting to the average student. "By their fruits ye shall know them." Chemistry's sole defense is the results it brings, in industry, in the arts, in medicine, in national defense, in short, in its service to humanity. The fruits of chemical research justify not only its existence, but continued and in~reasingsupport from the public and industry. Excluding the primal purpose of all educatiJe processes, i. e., to teach the student to think, the chief secondary raison d'atre of education is to give the student knowledge. To experience life as it is found outside classroom walls is to know that life. Hence the inspection trip. Chemistry students of California, Nevada, and Arizona, whether located rurally or in urban centers, have, a t their very back door, a vast storehouse of chemical wealth which is available for their inspection a t any time during the school year. Travel in the summer-time is perilous, due to the excessive heat, temperatures of 1.75140°F. not being uncommon. Expeditions into the Mojave Desert, the Amargosa, and the Death Valley Basins are becoming more and more frequent, as instructors learn of their abundance of study material, not only of chemicals, but also their fauna and flora. Its wealth of geological material for investigation allures the college "rock-hound." History of Glendale Expeditions The first Glendale excursion into the Mojave Basin occurred in the spring of 1925. The writer was lecturing to a class on the methods employed to
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extract borax and potash from the commercially valuable brines of Searles Lake. The suggestion was made that not only should the students see the process diagrammed on the blackboard, but they should also study it per sonally in the plant, and that both plant and lake, besides other depositions, could be programmed in a week-end inspection trip. On a Friday afternoon just two days later, five cars, laden with twentyone students of both sexes, a generous representation of fathers and mothers, camping equipment, cameras, notebooks, and other impedimenta, turned their radiator caps toward Mint Canyon, Mojave, Randsburg, and Trona. We covered over seven hundred miles in forty-eight hours, inspected a S'ierra large number of mines and chemical deposits, completely circled the , Madre Mountain Range, and received, first-hand, an understanding of the immensity and wealth of this huge country, large enough to embrace the combined states of Rhode Island, Delaware, Connecticut, and Massachusetts, and still leave room for most of the islands of the Hawaiian archipelago. Evolution of the Inspection Trip Bulletins Camping out a t the best water holes in the desert, spreading our blankets on the sand and rocks with nothing but the stars above us, facing the stinging sands of desert windstorms, washing dishes with water trickling from a canteen, swimming in a desert poo1,at ten o'clock a t night, changing and patching tires three hundred miles from civilization, making emergency repairs with hands numb with cold, ploi%mg through fine, flour-like dried silica that would pass a two-hundred mesh screen and so deep it scraped the running boards, traveling from one in the afternoon until midnight that night, and then going to bed supperless, this "Traveling School of the Desert" (2) gained by experience much wisdom which later evolved into paragraphs of directions in bulletins of later trips. For many weeks in advance of the date of leaving on these later trips, preparatory mimeographed bulletins were issued to all students enrolled for the trip. These contained detailed directions and precautions, which all members of the expedition were expected to follow. Growth of Desert Excursions Year after year the inspection trips to Death Valley, the Amargosa, and the Mojave Deserts became more highly organized, more extensive and intensive, and more heavily participated in by other schools and colleges of Southern California. The expeditions grew from five cars and twenty-two enrolled in 1925 to thirty-eight cars and one hundred sixty-five participants in 1929. Since 1929 smaller groups have enrolled.
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The Eagle Borax Works at Bennett's Wells, about twenty-five miles south of the Furnace Creek Ranch. Each student obtained a chunk of partially purified borax from the old dumps for his collection of specimens obtained on the trip.
Subjects Covered Not Confined Exclusively to Chemistry The second trip saw ten cars lined up a t t h e ~ a m p u sready for the desert trip, with forty-two students, parents, and faculty members participating. Frequent stops were made, either for a side trip to mine or plant, or a tenminute lecture on the history, geology, the fauna or flora, or chemical or mineralogical features of the region. The well-trained chemistry student should have a thorough, comprehensive knowledge of chemistry, physics, and mathematics. On the supposition that he should know something besides these, we were happy to include interesting bits of information on the biology or geology of the Mojave Basin. The First Trip into Death Valley In March, 1926, the writer led fifteen cars and seventy-four students, parents, and faculty memhers into Death Valley by way of Pilot Knob, Granite Wells, Owl Hole Springs, Bradbury Wells, Confidence Mill, Eagle Borax Works, Devil's Golf Course, and thence to Furnace Creek Ranch, where camp was made rather tardily for the night. And never did newmown hay, palm trees, green lawn, and swimming pool appeal more to sun-burned eyes and travel-weary bodies. Embryo chemists forgot science and took up the artistic. '
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A TROPICAL SCENE I N ONE OF THE MOST ARID.%?Ts ON l H l i GLUBI: These splendid specimens of palms grow 'in profusion a t the Furnace Creek Ranch in the he& of Death Valley. The tall ones are tkc typical fan palms of California and the Pacific Southwest, and represent the species Weshinglonia $life+e robusla; the medium size are Canarv oalms (Phoenix Canorienrisi. indieenous to the Canam Islands: t Date ~ a l m
