Amino Acid Jazz: Amplifying Biochemistry Concepts with Content-Rich Music

Abstract

Music is not typically used in teaching high school- and college-level chemistry. This may be attributable to instructors’ perceptions of educational music as being solely for memorization, their uncertainty about how to incorporate music effectively, or because of a limited number of suitable songs in which the music and words reinforce each other. To address these issues by way of a biochemistry example, we created Amino Acid Jazz, a sing-along exercise in which students synthesize a musical polypeptide from amino acid building blocks. Along the way, musical elements indicate key points about protein chemistry and structure. This exercise is an example of how the music of a song can amplify (rather than distract from) the content of the lyrics, and can thus promote knowledge acquisition that goes beyond rote memorization. Furthermore, it may be extended to incorporate students’ own creative ideas. Most initial feedback from students and other teachers has been positive.