Science & Mathematics

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries Svante Arrhenius and Henry Armstrong understood the dissolution process of salts in water quite differently. Arrhenius saw the dissolution process as one whereby the salt partially dissociated into its ions and Armstrong saw the dissolution process as one whereby the salt associated itself with water. History is somewhat kinder to Arrhenius than it is to Armstrong in that Arrhenius won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1903 for his electrolytic dissociation theory whereas Armstrong was considered of a 'hot air balloon' who made it his business to oppose every new thought in chemistry. In the 1920s Arrhenius' view of partial dissociation was replaced by a view of total dissociation for strong electrolytes with activity and osmotic coefficients being used to account for non-ideal solution behaviour. However, recent research has shown that strong 1:1 electrolytes are best understood by using Arrhenius' original idea of partial dissociation rather than total dissociation and Armstrong's idea of hydration. This strange confluence of factors has important implications for chemical epistemology and its role in chemistry education.

To those of us who are sold on history it may seem non-controversial to suggest that the learning and teaching of chemistry should give cognisance to the historical development of the subject. However, this suggestion is proving controversial amongst some in the chemistry profession. For example, in the October 2010 edition of Chemistry in Australia Rami Ibo takes issue with the emphasis on the history of science in the HSC chemistry curriculum (Year 12) in New South Wales. He studied chemistry, physics and biology for his HSC in NSW and concluded that, because the primary focus of these three sciences was History of Science, “There was hardly any content that challenged our minds, and calculations barely involved plugging in numbers into an equation…..We were required to recall Antoine Lavoisier’s experiments that led to the theories of acids and bases… while my friends in Lebanon were studying ideal gas laws, chemical kinetics, acids and bases, organic chemistry, soaps and detergents, medicinal chemistry and new materials” (Ibo 2010). What does the literature have to say in response to such arguments? Does the presence of the history of chemistry in a curriculum necessarily reduce important content and problem solving skills?

A study of the literature suggests at least three reasons for persisting with aspects of the history of chemistry in the learning and teaching of chemistry.

1. The fact that student conceptions sometimes recapitulate early ideas found in the history of chemistry is seen as offering teachers a means of a deeper understanding of student ideas with the potential for more positive learning outcomes.

2. Conceptual clarity is more easily achieved within an historical context. Often conceptual usefulness is pursued at the expense of conceptual depth (de Berg 2008a).

3. The history of chemistry directly gives us some idea of the epistemological status of chemistry within science and knowledge in general and therefore gives a student access to aspects of the Nature of Science.

This review chapter also examines different ways the history of chemistry has been incorporated into chemistry curricula and looks at the purported advantages, disadvantages, and limitations of such attempts. Some directions for future research in this area are included in the chapter.

This chapter discusses arguments surrounding how modern geology began using Christian Scholars perspectives from 1500 to 1860.

Spectroscopic methods play an important role in the study of iron-containing enzymes particularly for the study of reactive species, which are often difficult to characterize via crystallography. Theoretical spectroscopy, in combination with traditional quantum chemistry, is a powerful tool for the study of reactive intermediates. In this chapter the theory and applications of theoretical Mossbauer (MB), electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR), absorption spectra (ABS) and X-ray absorption spectroscopy (XAS), and nuclear resonance vibrational spectroscopy (NRVS) are described with a focus on the contribution that theoretical spectroscopy has made to the study of high-valent iron-oxo species in enzymatic and biomimetic systems.

Early Adventist attitudes towards the medical science of the day, particularly its administration of “drugs”, were characterised by suspicion and distrust. Early Adventist health remedies, both preventive and curative, were based on simple, natural therapies. However, modern Adventist medical institutions have now largely discarded such remedies. Instead, our fully accredited hospitals train medical professionals to the highest recognised standards, utilise the very latest technologies, dispense huge amounts of drugs and incorporate every scientific artifact in support of their healing endeavour. This paper examines the reasons for this apparent about face. Some of these reflect advances within both the scientific enterprise and conventional medical practice over this period and also changes in the relationship between them. Others may be understood as responses to sociological changes within society at large and the Church.

The first three chapters of this book provide successive pictures of Adventist health and medicine: the Western Health Reform Institute at Battle Creek, Michigan, c.1866, with its hydropathic remedies, representing Adventism's first foray into institutionalised health; the Sydney Sanitarium during the 1920s and 1930s; and the Sydney Adventist Hospital today, with its high tech instrumentation.

In the 1990’s two movements began to challenge the practice of science education from an historical and philosophical perspective. The International History and Philosophy of Science and Science Teaching Group (IHPST) maintains that not enough attention is being given to the intellectual heritage of many of our concepts in science with the result that, while students might be able to solve some quantitative problems in an algorithmic fashion, they have little understanding of the meaning or significance of the concepts they are using. The International Society for the Philosophy of Chemistry (ISPC) focuses its attention on the discipline of chemistry and has challenged practising chemists and chemistry educators to address, amongst other things, such fundamental questions as the meaning of the terms atom, element, law, and theory as they are used in chemistry. Is it possible to seek and accomplish conceptual depth, a desire of both international groups, without compromising conceptual usefulness, or must one be compromised in the pursuit of the other? In this paper this question is addressed in relation to the thermodynamic concepts of energy, heat, and work; the foundational concepts of element and the mole; and quantum mechanical concepts in chemistry. A textbook analysis of the definitions and use of these concepts in a tertiary level general chemistry course is given as is the implications of the study for chemistry education. [From publisher's website]