Some random thoughts and pictures

I'm listening to Najee, My Point of View. It's a CD one of you left here, so I copied it. I LIKE it!

I mentioned my Inorganic Chemistry course a while back. I'm teaching it for two students who needed it to complete their chemistry minors. Before I started teaching it, I only knew what little Inorganic Chemistry I learned in college lo those many years ago. So the three of us are learning it together. Obviously, the students are reading and learning from the text more than from any wisdom I impart to them. And believe it or not, they are learning a LOT, and they are amazed at how much they are learning by essentially teaching it to themselves (with some guidance from me of course). Furthermore, they seem to be enjoying it. Remember, these are not Chemistry Majors! The same thing happened when I taught Nuclear Chemistry twice to one student each time. I think all four students had an eye-opening experience. They learned that, yes they CAN read technical stuff, and they can learn best by really studying material (not "memorizing", which is what most students mean when they say "studying"). Those of who have taught know exactly what that is like, because most of us never really learned a lot until we started teaching ourselves, and we HAD to study the material.

I'm going to blog soon about what "professors" do (want to guess?) and what science really is.

I may attend a workshop this summer about writing textbooks, because I have a dream of writing a few books: one for General Chemistry, one for Organic Chemistry, one about learning and critical thinking, especially in chemistry, and one about the philosophy of scince, especially as it relates to chemistry. Probably just a dream, but who knows?

Here are a couple a pictures from our trip to the City Museum, taken at Denny's.

Greg and Sarah M

Dan and Sarah K