{"id":1986,"date":"2006-08-18T06:34:25","date_gmt":"2006-08-18T06:34:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/thescepticalchymist\/2006\/08\/the-right-chemistry.html"},"modified":"2006-08-18T06:34:25","modified_gmt":"2006-08-18T06:34:25","slug":"the_right_chemistry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/thescepticalchymist\/2006\/08\/the_right_chemistry.html","title":{"rendered":"The right chemistry"},"content":{"rendered":"

On the train home last night I was directed to an article in The Guardian<\/a> about the state of chemistry and physics education in the UK. (It’s a shame that the picture accompanying the online version is nowhere near as amusing as the one in the actual newspaper – it was your stereotypical wild-hair crazy-professor type, complete with labcoat, standing in front of a blackboard covered with chemical structures and even the mechanism of ester hydrolysis… base-catalysed just in case you were wondering).<\/p>\n

One of my favourite passages is the following:<\/p>\n

Add to the old stereotypes new ones about shortening attention spans and a rise in the need for instant gratification and it starts to look as if, while sticking a splint in a bunsen burner or watching magnesium combust might have swung things in the old days, these days it just won’t do.<\/em><\/p>\n

I wonder if I’d had an XBOX<\/span> whether I would have been so excited about a bit of sodium whizzing around in a beaker of water; all those flame tests with different colours probably wouldn’t have been all that captivating either…<\/p>\n

If you have a few minutes to spare, go and have a read and ponder on who should be the Jamie Oliver<\/a> (link included for the last few people on Earth who don’t know who this is) of chemistry?!<\/p>\n

Stuart<\/p>\n

Stuart Cantrill (Associate Editor, Nature Nanotechnology<\/a><\/em>)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On the train home last night I was directed to an article in The Guardian about the state of chemistry and physics education in the UK. (It\u2019s a shame that the picture accompanying the online version is nowhere near as amusing as the one in the actual newspaper \u2013 it was your stereotypical wild-hair crazy-professor type, complete with labcoat, standing in front of a blackboard covered with chemical structures and even the mechanism of ester hydrolysis\u2026 base-catalysed just in case you were wondering).  Read more<\/a> Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":123,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1986","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-stuart-cantrill"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/thescepticalchymist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1986","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/thescepticalchymist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/thescepticalchymist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/thescepticalchymist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/123"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/thescepticalchymist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1986"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/thescepticalchymist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1986\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/thescepticalchymist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1986"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/thescepticalchymist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1986"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/thescepticalchymist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1986"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}