JOIN USNarrating stories behind discoveries, inventions
Veena Prasad shows you how to make chemistry or other subjects less intimidating for students by narrating the history behind it.
There comes a wondrous moment in every child’s life when they want to know how we know what we know. We don’t even realise the gradual shift in questioning from “why” to “how do we know that”? When left unanswered, there is a real danger of the child losing interest in the subject altogether.
It is all very well to encourage the child to ask questions, and to egg her on to find out answers for herself, but there are some questions that go deep, and are key to sustaining interest and curiosity. Even if we do not know the answer, we can at least help children look in the general direction of the answer, which is backwards in time.
While talking of inventions and discoveries, most textbooks omit the history. In doing so, a wonderfully creative aspect of science is lost, making it tedious and difficult. In a classroom however, nothing prevents a teacher from talking about the roots of the discovery. Many important discoveries came about by accident, and these stories make the class more interesting thereby sparking interest increasing information retention. More importantly, students will see how unusual inferences can change the future for all humankind. Science need not be a dull memorization of facts and formulae, but a potential for creative expression. The following sections contain brief stories behind important discoveries that a teacher can effectively use in the classroom.
Gold from urine?
Chemistry, before it evolved into the science it is today, was a much maligned profession up until the late 17th century. Before this time, chemists largely spent their intellect in the pursuit of turning base metals into gold. They were alchemists. Some, like Hennig Brand went to extreme lengths to achieve this feat, collecting barrels full of urine, distilling it, turning it into a noxious paste, and keeping it for weeks in his cellar in the hope of watching it transform into gold. What he eventually got was not gold, but something that glowed in the dark and burst into flames when exposed to air. Brand had just discovered phosphorous. This ultimately lead to the manufacture of safety matches, but not until chemists were able to synthesize it in laboratories without having to collect vast quantities of urine. There’s nothing like a bit of toilet humour to brighten up a fifth grader’s day!
The solitaire game behind the periodic table
The periodic table of elements can be quite intimidating for a student at first look. How did Mendeleev think of grouping the elements this way? The story behind this (apart from being interesting) is instrumental in helping the student understand deeper and remember better. It was a game of cards, as it turns out, that inspired Mendeleev to come up with this arrangement. Scientists before him had arrived at two ways of arranging the elements – either by atomic weight, or by property (such as metal/gas/liquid), but Mendeleev wanted to come up with a way of showing both at the same time. It is said that he was hit by an idea while playing a game of Solitaire.
The objective of the card game known as Solitaire (or Patience) is to arrange cards by number in columns, and by suit in rows. As he stared at the cards so arranged, the elements appeared before him, and so the periodic table was born, with elements arranged by atomic number in rows, and by property in columns.
With one look, you can see one set of relationship while reading columns, and another while reading horizontal rows. It was effectively a puzzle that Mendeleev put together! When students understand the thought that went into this arrangement, it no longer becomes intimidating.
Laughing Gas is anaesthesia!
Until around 1840, thousands of patients endured excruciating pain while being operated upon, because no one knew about anaesthesia. Curiously, nitrous oxide had been discovered almost half a century earlier, but was used only as a “recreational drug”! Also called laughing gas, this compound when inhaled produced a light headedness that made it popular among the young crowd in England where it was discovered.
Theatres even had shows where participants got high on this stuff and entertained members of the audience with their comical antics. One such performance had amongst its audience a young dentist, Dr Horace Wells. He watched as a performer slashed his leg, started bleeding profusely, but claimed that he felt no pain. Dr Wells had an idea. He inhaled the gas, and asked a fellow dentist to extract his tooth, thereby successfully performing the first painless tooth extraction – some 50 years after the discovery of nitrous oxide!
So, all teachers need to do to make chemistry a fun game, is get hold of resources that offer the story behind science. A wonderful source of general science, with the history behind it, is Bill Bryson’s A Short History of Nearly Everything. For a rich understanding of human history, Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs and Steel is indispensible. Richard Dawkins’ The Ancestor’s Tale and The Blind Watchmaker provide in-depth knowledge of the origin and evolution of life on earth. Ramachandra Guha’s India after Gandhi is a well-told book of modern Indian history. The internet is a great source – in particular, the website http://www.storybehindthescience.org.
It has well-researched articles that can spark-off interesting classroom conversations. All these resources can be used to make learning and teaching an interactive and enriching experience.