{"id":2676,"date":"2010-02-23T16:30:00","date_gmt":"2010-02-23T16:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/thescepticalchymist\/2010\/02\/a-bit-of-a-fischy-answer.html"},"modified":"2011-12-20T11:15:20","modified_gmt":"2011-12-20T11:15:20","slug":"a_bit_of_a_fischy_answer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/thescepticalchymist\/2010\/02\/a_bit_of_a_fischy_answer.html","title":{"rendered":"A bit of a fischy answer"},"content":{"rendered":"

Readers in the UK will probably be aware of the TV quiz show \u2018University Challenge<\/a>\u2019. It\u2019s a general knowledge quiz in which teams representing universities and colleges from the UK compete (there\u2019s no monetary reward, only the honour of winning). The questions asked are all pretty challenging, and it\u2019s clear from watching the show that the question master \u2014 Jeremy Paxman<\/a> \u2014 is extremely knowledgeable about\u2026some of them. This is a fact that Neil has mentioned here<\/a> before.<\/p>\n

In my experience, chemistry rarely gets a good representation in the questions \u2013 the \u2018chemistry\u2019 questions have been known to include things like: \u2018Name three of the four elements whose names spelt in British English end in \u2018um\u2019 but not \u2018ium\u2019. With a good 5\u201310 minutes to mentally work my way through the periodic table I could have done this (although there would never be enough time to do this on the show) but more importantly it doesn\u2019t strike me as being about chemistry.<\/p>\n

And hence to the point of this post: Paxman sometimes accepts answers slightly different than those on the question card \u2013 if he feels that the contestants have demonstrated that they have the right idea. Last night there were quite a few chemistry questions. Of particular note was a question asking for the type of compounds formed by the Fischer\u2013Tropsch process<\/a>. The answer on the card was hydrocarbons<\/a>. The contestants were stumped. They nearly had it, but I would argue that their answer of \u2018hydrogen<\/a> and carbon<\/a>\u2019 wasn\u2019t quite close enough. These two elements are not hydrocarbons. Paxman, however, awarded the points.<\/p>\n

If we as chemists want people to understand what we do and why our jobs are important, then the subject needs to be represented more accurately in the mainstream media. Most chemists don\u2019t learn to recite the periodic table<\/a>, and don\u2019t really care about how many elements end in \u2018um\u2019 and not \u2018ium\u2019\u2014 it has, after all, little to do with similarities in the respective elements reactivity.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m also not arguing that Jeremy Paxman should have known that the answer to the Fischer\u2013Tropsch<\/a> question was wrong. And I for one would love to see more questions like this included, but there needs to be guidance about what is a suitable alternative answer and what isn\u2019t. Would he have been willing to award the points had the contestants offered a few real hydrocarbons<\/a> such as propane and butane? I think this would be a far more valid answer, but I\u2019d wager that it wouldn\u2019t have done the contestants any good.<\/p>\n

So here is a challenge for all of you. Can we come up with some questions that are really about chemistry, and that are:<\/p>\n

1)\tDifficult (but not so tough that you wouldn\u2019t have a chance of understanding them without a PhD in the topic area).<\/p>\n

2)\tAbout things that you\u2019d like a reasonably rounded individual \u2014 not necessarily a scientist \u2014 to have some idea of.<\/p>\n

If you want you could even provide possible alternative answers that you think really are ‘close enough’.<\/p>\n

I think the Fischer\u2013Tropsch<\/a> question would be about the right level \u2013 I\u2019d be hard pressed to name a reaction you could consider more industrially important (there are of course a few that are equal)\u2026<\/p>\n

Steve<\/p>\n

Stephen Davey (Associate Editor, Nature Chemistry<\/a><\/em>)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Readers in the UK will probably be aware of the TV quiz show \u2018University Challenge\u2019. It\u2019s a general knowledge quiz in which teams representing universities and colleges from the UK compete (there\u2019s no monetary reward, only the honour of winning). The questions asked are all pretty challenging, and it\u2019s clear from watching the show that the question master \u2014 Jeremy Paxman \u2014 is extremely knowledgeable about\u2026some of them. This is a fact that Neil has mentioned here before.  Read more<\/a> Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":205,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2676","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-stephen-davey"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/thescepticalchymist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2676","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\/205"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/thescepticalchymist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2676"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/thescepticalchymist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2676\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/thescepticalchymist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2676"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/thescepticalchymist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2676"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/thescepticalchymist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2676"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}