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Author Topic: SCIENCE, Gravitational waves, and the whole LIGO OST!  (Read 512938 times)

Il Palazzo

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Re: SCIENCE, the Higgs, and everything else!
« Reply #2910 on: March 26, 2015, 04:17:19 pm »

There's the 'Periodic Table of Videos' series on youtube by the same guy who does 60 Symbols (and a few other series).

They seem to be rather popular, and there's some evidence of their use by chemistry teachers in class.

So, I guess, more series like this? I generally love what Brady is doing with his educational youtube videos - but it's all centred around Nottingham Uni., so there's room for videos in other locales with other people and different facilities, in other languages perhaps?

By the way, this table of elements is so much better than pure symbols:
http://www.sciencegeek.net/tables/DeltaBioLarge.jpg
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wierd

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Re: SCIENCE, the Higgs, and everything else!
« Reply #2911 on: March 26, 2015, 06:41:01 pm »

I dont know what you are going on about; chemistry is f*cking awesome, and the implications should be obvious.  The systems it gives rise to are complex, marvelous things! How could anyone see it as boring or uninteresting?!

Physics tells you how matter and energy interact, but chemistry tells you how matter interacts with other matter, using energy.  It's one of the most powerful and amazing of the physical sciences.  I F*cking LOVE chemistry!
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i2amroy

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Re: SCIENCE, the Higgs, and everything else!
« Reply #2912 on: March 26, 2015, 06:51:38 pm »

I know it's awesome. My point is just that it requires a bit more of an in-depth knowledge before you can see the awesome clearly (without it being so awesome it overshadows the whole chemistry side of things) than something like physics does. :P
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Re: SCIENCE, the Higgs, and everything else!
« Reply #2913 on: March 26, 2015, 06:51:54 pm »

Nah, chemistry tells you how a specific subset of matter interacts with another member of said specific subset of matter through the electromagnetic force in particular. It's specific as hell. It's also the only thing that humans get to interact with in any reasonable way, since humans kinda run on chemistry and environments where chemistry won't work are environments where humans won't, either.

Urist Arrhenius

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Re: SCIENCE, the Higgs, and everything else!
« Reply #2914 on: March 26, 2015, 06:59:38 pm »

I think a large part of it is that chemistry, for the most part, tends to focus a lot on what is, essentially, a single branch of physics. As a result you get lots of papers about creating a new chemical, or about the properties of a new chemical, but the fact that the majority of them have long, latin names and the fact that many applications aren't immediately apparent means that it just isn't interesting to the common person that much.
By that logic, biology is simply a single branch of chemistry. But as to the applicability, that just means we're failing to communicate what we are doing effectively. A large number of us are making very useful products. I'm trying to make bio-renewable and bio-degradable plastics out of corn with high glass transition temperatures. I know people who make anti- testicular cancer drugs that cost ~1/100th of current drugs and are ten times as effective, somebody working on vaccines against drug use, somebody working on chemotherapy delivery systems that will minimize the impact on off-target organs, and the list goes on and on.

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That's also probably why even when chemistry does make the news it's almost always the applications of it while skipping over the process. You might see a headline like "NEW FUEL CREATED", but you aren't going to see one like "NEW PROPERTIES OF AMMONIA DIHYDRALE METHALATE FOUND" (just made that name up out of the blue, probably doesn't even exist).
I don't know that this is a problem. I'd be happy even if I saw more headlines like the first that actually recognized that chemists did it.

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Even the basic parts of chemistry are rather esoteric. Just learning the basis of a chemical reaction requires you to be able to look at and understand a rather large chart of different elements, understand how valence electrons work, etc.. Physics, on the other hand, is basically doesn't suffer from either of those problems. The basics of physics can usually be drawn fairly well from analogy, which makes them easy to explain to those not in the know. In addition the results are usually things that people have been experiencing all their life, and as such are immediately apparent.
I think this just means we're failing to find appropriate analogies. I think chemistry could make the same intuitive sense, but most of us are just better researchers than educators.

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As an example if I was trying to teach someone the basics of how light works I might be able to draw examples of things like rainbows and mirrors that people work with in every day life. On the other hand pretty much all of the chemistry examples you meet in ordinary life fall under a different heading, "cooking". If I was talking about light I could speak about how you can do a variety of different things to light, like bending it, splitting it, combining it, reflecting it, and what exactly was happening in each case and how they made different things happen. In chemistry you're largely confined to "we mix X and Y and Z in a big pot, heat it to this temperature, and wait for a while to get W".
That's fair, but there are ideas beyond mixing things which we could attempt to explain, i.e. stereochemistry, conjugated pi systems, aromatics, functional groups in general.

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In physics we already know the applications, so the reasons why they happen are cool but still simple enough to be understood. In chemistry the reasons are mostly the same, and they're complex enough to not be easily understood, while the applications tend to either be so esoteric nobody but chemists can see them, or they are so big they overshadow the chemistry part itself. And all the simpler, common chemistry things don't even get known as chemistry, they get thrown about into other fields like cooking.
I think this ties back both into the fact that chemistry is in more than is recognized, and we need better analogies. I appreciate you sharing your experience with chemistry. :)
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Putnam

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Re: SCIENCE, the Higgs, and everything else!
« Reply #2915 on: March 26, 2015, 07:03:24 pm »

I'd say it's pretty useful despite its specificity, given that it's literally everything that the layman interacts with every day.

Urist Arrhenius

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Re: SCIENCE, the Higgs, and everything else!
« Reply #2916 on: March 26, 2015, 07:06:34 pm »

I'd say it's pretty useful despite its specificity, given that it's literally everything that the layman interacts with every day.
I agree. I think we do an insufficient job of demonstrating this, and that's why chemistry is often overlooked.
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MonkeyHead

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Re: SCIENCE, the Higgs, and everything else!
« Reply #2917 on: March 27, 2015, 11:43:49 am »

Physics has Space Flight, Fusion, the LHC, and a fair few other attention grabbing BIG SHINY THINGSTM that people can get excited about and interested in, even if they know nothing of the underlying science. Other sciences all have less to work with in this respect, in varying degrees.

wierd

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Re: SCIENCE, the Higgs, and everything else!
« Reply #2918 on: March 27, 2015, 11:46:57 am »

chemistry has vaccines for ebola, synthetic insulin, membrane filters for reverse osmosis, processed foods of all kinds (including potato chips and candy of all kinds), plastics for industrial and commercial uses-- The manufacturing technologies that allow computers to be made (The physics are what allow them to work), and so much more.

Chemistry is litterally every tangible thing you can lay your hands on.
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MonkeyHead

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Re: SCIENCE, the Higgs, and everything else!
« Reply #2919 on: March 27, 2015, 11:57:16 am »

Yes, but as every day things, people take such awesomeness totally for granted. It s not awesome everyday things that make people excited and interested. It is the one of a kind things that could kill millions if it all goes wrong that costs ALL THE MONIES that get peoples imaginations going, not "slightly better bottles".

Sergarr

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Re: SCIENCE, the Higgs, and everything else!
« Reply #2920 on: March 27, 2015, 12:08:52 pm »

chemistry has vaccines for ebola, synthetic insulin, membrane filters for reverse osmosis, processed foods of all kinds (including potato chips and candy of all kinds), plastics for industrial and commercial uses-- The manufacturing technologies that allow computers to be made (The physics are what allow them to work), and so much more.

Chemistry is litterally every tangible thing you can lay your hands on.
Except the glorious STEEL.

STEEL (and other metals) are governed by the glorious MATERIAL SCIENCE which is totally awesome and is, like, the most metal (hehe) science ever!
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miauw62

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Re: SCIENCE, the Higgs, and everything else!
« Reply #2921 on: March 27, 2015, 01:01:21 pm »

Hey, at least you're not geography :P
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Re: SCIENCE, the Higgs, and everything else!
« Reply #2922 on: March 27, 2015, 01:27:05 pm »

I love material science, automation, industry.

I've stayed up the entire night for three nights playing Factorio :P
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Re: SCIENCE, the Higgs, and everything else!
« Reply #2923 on: March 27, 2015, 02:28:22 pm »

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Re: SCIENCE, the Higgs, and everything else!
« Reply #2924 on: March 27, 2015, 02:47:12 pm »

I'm just waiting for material science to produce a lightweight material capable of withstanding the implosive pressure of "containing" a vacuum, so people will finally stop laughing at me when I propose vacuum balloons.
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