MAY, 1952
THE TERMINAL COURSE IN CHEMISTRY HUBERT N. ALYEA Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey
Tms discussion of the terwinal course wiU be, like great responsibility. Are they future bankers? business Gaul, divided into three parts: who is to be taught? what is to be taught? how is it to be taught? WHO
Is your class a miscellany of nonscientists doomed, according to your standards, to a life of untruth and unreality? Do not apologize for them: you have a
men? politicians? They are the men who will make decisions of great importance for the future of chemistry. They will appropriate monies for research; and your terminal course will help them decide wisely. Are your terminal students "home ecs," beautiful but dumb? Treat them to the thrill of discovering that they, too, can understand science. Are they
JOURNAL OF CHEMICAL EDUCATION
poets? artists? Are they sensitively aware of beauty in music and art? Teach them the beauty of truth. Are they philosophers? Reveal t o them the joy of a logic based on the simple premises of Nature's laws. Remember too: this may not be a terminal course for some. I had the pleasure of noting that two of the 12 honors seniors in Princeton last June came from the terminal course, for they had passed on to our more technical courses greatly matured in scientific attitudes.
and second order reaction rates-what strange topics for beginning students. No! for they sense my own enthusiasm and are thereby infected intellectually. A week on the three laws of thermodynamics. A week on the gas laws, not describing them in elementary word-pictures, hut deriving P V = nRT from hhe assumption that kT = '/rmu, and from that predicting the laws of Boyle and of Charles, and also the less familiar law which they themselves can "discover" as P = kT. Or you may be more interested in bond strengths, free energy, electromotive forces, dielectric WHAT constants, crystal structure, organic synthesis. No Here the speakers at the Chicago, September, 1950, matter; you are scientifically excited and curious, meeting often disagreed. All use some case histories; and that is the law of infection. in fact several universities had already been using The word "abnormal topics" was used advisedly, this medium years before President Conant brilliantly for we might also include "special, research topics" described its potentialities in "On Understanding in the course. These are on a still higher plane Science." Dr. Nash of Hanard, at the Chicago of specialization. Professor Pauling brought this meeting, presented an eloquent plea for the historical out in the discussion at the Chicago meeting: from approach,' using eighteenth century case histories time to time he will tell the students to fold up their uncluttered(?) by the intricacies of modern science. notebooks, for they will not be quizzed; and then But eighteenth century case histories are not, by he launches into a dissertation on proteins, amino themselves, the whole answer; the student should acids, and other highly specialized topics. I have share in the excitement of current discoveries as well. done the same for my classes in the field of chain How can we expect to arouse his curiosity by a dis- reactions and inhibition. It you will do the same sertation on dephlogisticated marine acid air (and no in your own special field of research, the student will more) when he passes out of the classroom into a world catch your spark of scientific enthusiasm. full of vitamins, sex hormones, and atom bombs? This spirit of research must be injected into any In the Princeton course, for instance, we spend an entire terminal course which is to be alive. In addition week on the changing concept of hydrogen: from the you must help the nonscientist t o transpose this four elements of the ancients, through phogiston of spirit into his everyday life. Is it zeal to work? the Middle Ages, on to Caveudish discovering the Listen to Robert Boyle: compound nature of water, and especially tracing In my laboratory I find that water of Lethe which csuses me to the rapidly changing twentieth century concepts of itits atomic structure, atomic hydrogen and its reactions, forget everything but the joy of making experiments. application of quantum mechanics in predicting ortho- Zeal inspires hard work. Mendeleev writes in the prefpara hydrogen molecules, and the hydrogen isotopes, ace of his textbook: down to the radioactive hydrogen of today. This investigation is dedicated to the memory of a mother by Dean Bent presented, a t the Chicago meeting, her youngest offspring. Conducting a factory she could educate a very sane appraisal of the needs of the terminal him only by her own work. She instructed by example, corwith love, and in order to devote him to science she left course: consideration of the future lives of the students, rected Siberia with him, spending thus her last resources and strength. familiarizing them with descriptive material and When dying she said: Refrain from illusions, insist on work and nature's laws; caution lest the use of too much mathe- not on words. Patiently search divine and scientific truth. matics spoil their intellectual fun. Oh yes, we must also have our dreamers. We all. There are three kinds of subjects for the terminal recall August K e k u l k t h e architect turned chemistcourse which I shall call normal, abnormal, and re- who continued to dream about molecular architecture: search topics. Normal topics are taught in every I was sitting writing s t my textbook; but the work did not chemistry class: the orderliness of the periodic table, progress, my thots were elsewhere. I turned my chair to the fire ionic size as related to atomic structure and its in- and dozed . . ..the atoms were gamboling before my eyes. . . . My fluence on chemical and physical properties, principles mental eye . . . . rendered more acute by repeated visions of this of equilibrium applied t o some important industrial kind could now distinguish . . . .all twining and twisting in snakelike fashion. But look! What was that? One of the snakes had processes, and so on. These you know. seized hold of its own tail, and the form whirled mockingly hefore Abnormal topics are those peculiar to each teacher my eyes. As if by s. flash of lightening I awoke; and this time I and his own interests. I have always been interested also spent the rest of the night in working out the consequences of in kinetics: I can therefore teach my students more the hypothesis . . . . Let us learn to dream, gentlemen, then perenthusiastically in that field than others. First hpps we shell find the truth . . . . but let us beware of publishing 'Nash, L. K., J. CHEW. EDUC., 28,146 (1951).
our dreams until they hsve been put to the proof by the waking understanding.
MAY,1952
Expect some failuresin science and research even as in life. The world [writes Michael Fareday] little knows how many of the thoughts and theories which have passed through the mind of a scientific investigator have been crushed in silence and secrecy by his own severe criticism and adverse examinations.
The story of Ehrlich; of failure-utter and ignominious-before his great discovery of 606. Of Fletcher and his spoiled culture spotted with Penin'llium notatum in which "he was sufficiently interested" to save the lives of millions of human beings. And then a t last success! As Scheele writes: I t is truth alone we desire to know; and what joy there is in discovering it.
Chemistry and Living; yes they can go hand in hand, and it is the task of the teacher to span these two, for the student. To fire him with zeal for something in life. To work and work through failure toward success. To push on after college years until we become authorities in something; for that surely brings happiness t o man. This is a creed to bring to your students. A page from the chapter of science, in the Book of Life. It is important, too, continually to remind these nonscientists of the inaccuracies of science and of the suspended judgment of science which says Say not it is the truth hut so it seems to me to be as I now see tho thing1 think I see.
I n general chemistry courses a proper balance must be struck between (1) arousing the student's curiosity in things scientific, (2) learning facts, (3) exercising his critical judgment. For the terminal course greater emphasis is to be placed on the first and the last, for facts are subservient. On the other hand, for the budding scientist, whose curiosity is already in evidence, the last two are more important, especially the learning of facts and the principles which substantiate those facts. For the student will have many opportunities to exercise critical judgment in more advanced science courses. HOW
Lecture demonstrations? Of course. They are indispensable for arousing curiosity. But be sure t o present these lecture experiments slowly, with deliberation, and with great pains that the demonstration and more particularly the principle is understood. It is not just a scientific show. Laboratory? Naturally. Be you doers of the word and not hearers only. Not cookbook assignments but simple experiments which the student devises himself, no matter how crude and amateurish; observations which he makes and records himself, no matter how inaccurate and unreliable; conclusions which he
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formulates himself, no matter how fallacious. This is his own brain-child aborning; it is the growingpains of his intellect, his real education. I s there much residue from our course left in the student ten years hence? That is the test of any course. For a whole month and a half we have our students carry out the iodine clock experiment: to search the literature in the library and make a complete report on their reading therefrom; to devise experimental details of how they will measure the effect of concentration, pH, temperature, catalysts, and inhibitors on the r e action; to carry out their measurements and report them in a formal paper suitable for submitting to the editor; and to list several research propositions. These young men, these nonscientists, submit astonishingly clever propositions. Out of them during the past two years have come the discovery of a clock reaction which first turns orange, then black; of a way to photosensitize the iodine clock to visible light; of the effectsof heterogeneous catalysts on the reaction. Remember, nonscientists! Yet they will remember the original research they carried out in our chemistry laboratory long after they have forgotten those quotations from Byron, Shelley, or Keats. Terminal course? May I quote now from a letter which I received this summer from a student in my terminal course. I hope it will be received in the spirit in which I write it: not for its praise, but for the sincere statement of what a young man may realize from a year's contact with science: If I were to my that I enjoyed the year of freshman chemiatry it is an understatement. how much I appreimmensely. how much happiness . . from being exposed to the ciated mateGI and thought. I was not a good student; the B I received was gotten with considerableeffort. But my difficulty was in mastering the mechanics of things like equilibrium constant, and not its role in human achievement and its value to humanity .And haw grateful I am for. "Savnot thisis the truth."ete.. lor that has formid what fhave. People who &ink ihat they have a corner on truth amuse me! I have assumptions to go on; that which seems to be true. And you see how indebted I am, to you for it. I shall long remember Fleming's "I was sufficiently interested to pursue" and Pasteur's "Chance favors only the prepared mind," and on and on. That was the completely thrilling thing about chemistry to me. To think of the tireless probing of those men was a t once refreshing to me. Let me quote Stephen C r a n w n e poem in particular reminds me of all real scientists:
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Pursuing the Horizon I saw a man pursuing the horizon-Round round they sped. I was disturbed a t this; I accosted the man. "It is futile," I said, "You can never. . ." "You lie" he cried, and ran on.
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More thanks than I can my for a thrilling year.
This letter was from an English major, a nonscientist. And so, you see, for a t least one student in my terminal course in chemistry last year, the terminal course was only the beginning.
