From owner-chemistry@ccl.net Thu Aug 27 16:41:01 2009 From: "Mark Zottola mzottola[a]gmail.com" To: CCL Subject: CCL: And now something completely different! Message-Id: <-40096-090827161043-6790-yOZkG3mV2ruB3cwK00uDJA|*|server.ccl.net> X-Original-From: Mark Zottola Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Date: Thu, 27 Aug 2009 16:10:22 -0400 MIME-Version: 1.0 Sent to CCL by: Mark Zottola [mzottola!A!gmail.com] Normally I just read posts like this and let life move on.=A0 But I feel compelled to put in my two cents. First, as a tool to get high school students interested in science, I think it is a GREAT idea!=A0 I grew up learning about valence shell electrons in circular orbits around a nucleus.=A0 Was that WRONG? Should I have been given a quantum mechanics text at age 5 and told to learn it or forget about chemistry?=A0 This is a WONDERFUL idea to bring scientific concepts to students who are barraged by (at least the American) media that "Science is Really Hard!"=A0 As a result great scientific minds get seduced by the siren's call of money.=A0 Instead these lost minds go into Business and Finance.=A0 If recent events are not enough to convince people that poorly focused minds can bring great destruction, there is no hope for you. Secondly, as a University professor who regularly mentored high school students, there is nothing that kindles excitement more in young minds than the hope of understanding.=A0 I had students working on projects involving special relativity, kinetic behaviour of noble gases and even quantum mechanics.=A0 These students hungrily tore into their projects because they had an understanding.=A0 I did not use You-Tube or other media sources.=A0 I did it the old-fashioned way.=A0=A0Many=A0high school students that experience true=A0mentorship have an unbounded enthusiasm that translates into learning science in a way deeper and more fully than any classroom. Finally, with all due respect - Science is FUN!=A0 While it is hard work, while there is much angst, it is still fun.=A0 We uncover the secrets of life, the mysteries of the universe!=A0 We have tools to help us see beyond the horizons.=A0 We share our knowledge in the hope of making a better world for all of us.=A0 We are Lewis and Clark, we are Captain Cook and Magellan, we are Sir Edmund Hillary, we are all that and something more!=A0 How can this NOT be fun?=A0 Ever play baseball and been hit by a pitch, ever get beaten by a midfielder with fresher legs in the 80th minute,=A0ever get an elbow when going up for a rebound? Not fun, not at all, yet it is part of the joy of sports that people endure all this!=A0 Yeah we struggle with experiments,=A0derivations and confusing results, but we do it because it is, in our hearts, fun! If science is not fun, please do find your life's work and enjoy that. Life is too short. On Thu, Aug 27, 2009 at 12:57 PM, Mihaly Mezei Mihaly.Mezei]*[mssm.edu wrote: > > > Sent to CCL by: Mihaly Mezei [Mihaly.Mezei]_[mssm.edu] > > While I liked your movie, I dont believe that this is a good =A0impress= ion to > > convey to new or prospective students. It only sets them up for > > inevitable disappointment when they find out that doing and learning > > science is not really fun, but tedious, hard and often boring work (no = one who ever > > debugged parallel code could disagree...) I don't want to depreciate my > > own profession, because obviously the results of doing research are > > worth every bit of effort. As an analogy, the Golden Gate Bridge > > surely is impressive, but I don't think it was fun to build. > > I agree with Dr. Steinbrecher. > > Also, I would like to point out that the "fun" we are having when doing s= cience (and we do) is very different from the "fun" of, say, attending a ro= ck concert. To me, the "fun" is when after a tedious derivation, the pesky = higher order terms cancel and I end up with a closed form result. Or, when = after weeks of coding, debugging and testing, an idea I had turns out to be= correct. Or, after half an hour of head scratching, I manage to solve a Su= doku labeled 'hard'. =A0Maybe the closest analogy would be a strenuous hike= to a spot with spectacular view. I think that this is the idea of fun that= we have to convey to the future generation. > > Mihaly Mezei > > Department of Structural and Chemical Biology, Mount Sinai School of Medi= cine, NYU > Voice: =A0(212) 659-5475 =A0 Fax: (212) 849-2456 > WWW (MSSM home): http://www.mountsinai.org/Find%20A%20Faculty/profile.do?= id=3D0000072500001497192632 > WWW (Lab home - software, publications): http://inka.mssm.edu/~mezei > WWW (Department): http://atlas.physbio.mssm.edu > > > > -=3D This is automatically added to each message by the mailing script = =3D-> =A0 =A0 =A0http://www.ccl.net/cgi-bin/ccl/send_ccl_message> =A0 =A0 =A0http://www.ccl.net/cgi-bin/ccl/send_ccl_message> =A0 =A0 =A0http://www.ccl.net/chemistry/sub_unsub.shtml> =A0 =A0 =A0http://www.ccl.net/spammers.txt> >