Materials Girl: Moving in
Posted on behalf of Materials Girl:
***This is the first part of a three-post series
Less than two weeks ago, organized chaos descended on campus as 9,000 undergraduates relocated from their homes to the dormitories. Those of us who volunteered as Move-In Assistants (MIAs) came early in exchange for “slave labor”, providing a smooth transition for the incoming hordes by decorating, hauling, directing, etc.
An MIA's duties include giving shuttle tours for incoming families. This includes an inquiry of the incoming students' majors, which inevitably results in a nervous, energetic chorus of "Undeclared!", "Psychology!" or "English!" The mood is occasionally lifted by a dour proclamation of the intent to enter engineering, or even pre-med. Alas, it seems that the breed of chemists here is dying out in the wake of humanities, engineering, and – horrors – biochemistry!*
Stating my own major tends to draw blank expressions – we may as well be aliens from the planet Tetraphenylcyclopentadienone.** Freshmen, especially, seem to hold in awe anyone who studies any branch of chemistry, and others haven't a clue what materials science engineering even is.
Having not attended school in the traditional fashion, I am at a loss to guess why there exists a relatively small number of chemistry applicants arriving from high school. What are they teaching before university? Have the ranks of chemists always seemed few? Hopefully, that is just the case at this one California school, and the land of chemists thrives elsewhere...
*Seriously, they are all wonderful, but the ratio of biochemists and chemists is approximately 3:1 and feels like 100:1 – even less with materials chemists. The all-knowing *cough* Facebook search at my school lists a mere 13 Chem/Mat-Sci majors, two-thirds of which are grad students.
**C29H20O, because that was the first interesting compound I synthesized during freshmen year. (Nothing soothed my nerves more than seeing fine, beautiful, dark purple crystals appear out of an unfathomably dark solution). Plus, the name is just cool. Say "tetraphenylcyclopentadienone" ten times fast.
Comments
Tetracylcone's major resonance contributor is antiaromatic, hence its intense low energy optical absorption. Tetracyclone to hexaphenylbenzene then FeCl3/MeNO2 oxidation. Product hexabenzocoronene melts higher than a melting point capillary.
Michael Haley and Rik Tykwinski, 2006, pp. 97ff, ISBN 352731224298.
"Undeclared!", "Psychology!" or "English!"
Science 315(5818) 1485 (2007). In 2005 the following percentages of US new high school graduates had no testable arithmetic skills: 25% of Asians, 30% of Whites, 60% of Hispanics, 70% of Blacks.
One warmly praises US higher education for adapting to its inputs. Ditto US public education for (still in progress) lowering its barriers until no child is left behind.
[Editor's note: the wording of this comment has been changed to reflect the terminology used in the quoted source].
Posted by: Uncle Al | October 4, 2007 11:50 AM
Wait, what was the point of this post again?
Mitch
[Editor's note: seems to me it's about campus life and the fact that proportionately not many new students are, or admit to being, chem majors - Materials Girl may have something to say in response as well...]
Posted by: Mitch | October 4, 2007 12:23 PM
Uncle Al: heh, I hate the "no child left behind" idea, at least in the way that they're doing it. Basic standards shouldn't have to be lowered to accommodate lack of effort. (And I'd wager that students are at lower levels due to lack of effort, not of mental capacity.)
Mitch: On that argument, you could argue that a lot of these posts have no point, however I doubt that the editors would post them were they in agreement. Note what the editor said after your comment. I tend to introduce/progress to chemistry-related ideas with something from current events before getting to "the point". Going off on a few tangents doesn't make something pointless, in my humble opinion...
Posted by: Materials Girl | October 5, 2007 10:49 AM