unified understanding of science

I never quite made it to what was going to be my main point in that last post (due to agonizing over the modern state of affairs, as it were), which is thus: I love science, specifically chemistry. If there ever was a branch of science at which I have never been skilled, it would be chemistry. Chemistry--bane of both my high school and college experiences. Chemistry--the science that made me feel bad about myself. Chemistry--my cognitive tormentor. Chemistry--a lifetime struggle with its patterns and symmetry.

This year, I threw myself into the teaching of chemistry and it has created new synaptic pathways! My understanding of how it fits together with nature has grown tremendously. Years of study and work in science (specifically applied chemistry!) did not impart the level of understanding that I feel like I have now. It quite literally feels like a block has been lifted—a breakthrough! I get it now! I know I get it now because of a question I received recently--a student wanted to use sodium iodide for a Halloween trick she found on the web. We didn’t have sodium iodide, but we did have potassium iodide, and though I know nothing about those chemicals (OK, my bad), I did know that potassium would probably react more violently than the sodium, being in the same group, but further down on the periodic table. I knew this! I don’t feel like I knew anything about chemistry before, other than there were periodic trends that I didn’t really know, but someone else might (!).

Teaching is insanely hard on many levels, but look at the rewards—you get smarter, you learn how to deal with the wide range of irrational human emotions and you learn time management like no one’s business! I sort of feel like anyone who gets a PhD should be required to complete one year of teaching their subject in a high school. You learn so much fundamentally about the subject, and also how to present material to students, two things that are sorely lacking in academia. How many crappy, yet brilliant, professors does one have at any given college? I certainly had many, and without fail I always felt as if I had a learning problem. I remember asking an environmental studies professor (who was in the biology department) why logs float down a river (they are so big, shouldn’t they sink!(?)). He told me he didn’t know. If he taught high school science, he would have been able to answer that question (density). So fundamental, yet so far from the brains of smart people who narrow their focus and never really had to explain basic concepts in their life, or on the other hand, just sort of skipped to the specialized PhD level without really getting a grasp on a fundamental understanding of science (totally happens, I know of people like this, but rest assured, no one who reads this blog!).

Questions I have had to answer this year (and it's only November):
Why is the sky blue?
What is gravity?
Why is there wind?
Is emotion matter? (it’s a chemical process in the brain, which is matter. It wouldn’t exist without the brain, but it’s not matter?)
Why do we have an atmosphere?
When are tectonic plates going to stop moving?
What is an alpha particle?
Why are some isotopes of an element so much more abundant than others?
How can you tell, or calculate, whether an isotope of an atom is going to be stable or radioactive?