Chemistry Education: Lighting a Fire

Abstract

Dark tunnels deep below the forest floor. Explosions. Heavy trucks. Great boulders, no longer buried in the hidden sediments of time, rolling helplessly against the merciless metal balls that crush them to the same size. Small brownish beads swiftly carried along endless rubber belts, to be inspected and judged. Computerized probes seeking only those beads that glow under the intense glare of their lights. Two streams now – one narrow, for the beads that glow, the other wide, for those that do not. The beads in the narrow stream journey forward, the rest are dropped back into the empty tunnels whence they came, the few hours of golden sunlight soon forgotten in the endless dark. My imagination was running overtime when, about 20 years ago, an enthusiastic young physicist described the process used by Argyl Diamonds to separate diamonds from waste rock. The driving force behind the development of this machinery was, of course, economics. However, as he talked excitedly about the science behind the process, the educator in me could only think of the story behind all those diamonds. Formed within the warm embrace of clay over millions of years, the diamonds that were detected under those bright lights now only knew the touch of cold grey machinery, as they were formed into cutting edges for other machines, and even scalpels. My mind then turned to the larger diamonds, now crushed to the same size as all the others. Yet had they been discovered earlier, each would have known the loving caress of a craftsman – one who could look with wonder at the inner strength already bestowed by Nature, then design a way to reveal its sparkle and fire. And then there were the smaller diamonds, hidden under a skin of clay, unable to glow and so undetected and cast out as worthless. ‘They’re not worth worrying about’ he shrugged, when asked – an attitude no doubt shaped by the ‘bean-counters’ who employed him. Not worth it? The chemist in me could only visualize that beautiful diamond structure and the long story behind its creation, a story that began in some ancient giant star, and shudder at the loss. Then my thoughts went to the clay itself. Is it really worthless? Is it not clay that sustains our life, holding within it the moisture andminerals our plants need to grow?And is it not clay that for thousands of years has been shaped and moulded to create objects from simple pots to great works of art? Clay even has held the records our ancient history – the thoughts and stories and beliefs of our forbears. This was one of those pivotal moments for me as a Chemistry teacher. To me, the diamond-sorting machinery was a powerful metaphor for the machinery that operates in our society – the machinery by which we sort and judge people, both in our social interactions and in our education system. All too often we readily judge and label others – by their gender, age, race, appearance, abilities and disabilities, personality, degree of formal education, the kind of job they do, how ‘successful’ they are, and their interests, values, and beliefs. And no doubt over our lifetimeswe all have been on the receiving end of this kind of judgement, ormisjudgement. This can have a very powerful influence on the direction our life takes. I think now of Ernest Rutherford, that eminent physicist who pronounced: ‘All Science is either Physics or stampcollecting!’ How many brilliant young minds were turned off Chemistry by an attitude like that? Ironically he only ever won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry, not for Physics. How he must have hated that! I think too of the standout moment that decided the direction I would take in my academic studies. This was the moment my Year 10 history teacher asked me which course of study I would take in Year 11. My favourite subjects were history and maths, but at that time we could only choose between Science, Humanities, or Commerce. So I said I was thinking of doing Science. ‘Girls don’t do Science!’ he roared. My respect for my hitherto outstanding teacher was shattered in one blow. To his great disappointment, all that he achieved was to make me determined to prove him wrong. And so I was the first girl in the school to study Science. Mind you, several boys in my class at school clearly shared his view and gave me a hard time, not that I ever let my anger at their injustice show. Instead I became all themore determined to show them girls could ‘do Science’, and do it better than them!