I'm starting - very slowly - to figure out why chemists (at least our chemist, who's teaching the Chemistry of Life course I'm sitting in on) love the Periodic Table of the Elements so. Since our program practices "discovery science" pedagogy, we're having to figure out such things as the significance of rows and columns for ourselves (guided of course by problems, etc.), and that's quite exciting. It does seem to necessitate periodic perplexity, though - necessitate, perhaps, because part of what we're learning is through what stages and incomplete theories chemists came to discover the physical and chemical properties that distinguish the elements: how could Mendeleev have discerned the table before anyone knew how any of the elements were constituted?
Saturday, September 20, 2008
Periodic enlightenment
I'm starting - very slowly - to figure out why chemists (at least our chemist, who's teaching the Chemistry of Life course I'm sitting in on) love the Periodic Table of the Elements so. Since our program practices "discovery science" pedagogy, we're having to figure out such things as the significance of rows and columns for ourselves (guided of course by problems, etc.), and that's quite exciting. It does seem to necessitate periodic perplexity, though - necessitate, perhaps, because part of what we're learning is through what stages and incomplete theories chemists came to discover the physical and chemical properties that distinguish the elements: how could Mendeleev have discerned the table before anyone knew how any of the elements were constituted?
