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What I hated was having to memorize orbitals in freshman chemistry, then after taking modern physics as a junior, the orbitals were deduced easily. Anyway, I h

What I hated was having to memorize orbitals in freshman chemistry, then after taking modern physics as a junior, the orbitals were deduced easily. Anyway, I hated chemistry, as it seemed all rote memorization. Physics was so much better. It’s also more applicable to RF.

jcims 7y ago
Totally agree. The idea that chemistry is separate from physics is pretty dumb anyway. I'm kinda talking out of my blowhole here, but it seems the reason chemistry and biology are distinguished from physics is that there are a lot of emergent phenomenon that we didn't and in many cases still can't predict from the fundamental physics. But, it's still there. Maybe chemistry should be called molecular dynamics or something like that. Jazz it up a bit. Also, more explosions and experiments with fart gas.
- Koshkin 7y ago
  This old adage is called ‘reductionism.’
  - jcims 7y ago
    TIL! Thanks
  - izacus 7y ago
    And the obligatory XKCD: https://xkcd.com/435/ https://xkcd.com/435/
    - jcims 7y ago
      Nice!
- tsimionescu 7y ago
  But some sciences really do require a lot of memorization, and even if we could understand the entire world from first principles, biology would still remain a separate science from physics, especially in the area of anatomy and ecology. Perhaps one day we will be able to account for each biological process starting from physics, but that still won't help us find new species of orchids and which bees pollinate them. Even for chemistry, sure, you can use quantum mechanics to predict what combining hydrochloric acid with caustic soda produce, but that is far, far more difficult than remembering some valence for the few common elements.
- Supermancho 7y ago
  > The idea that chemistry is separate from physics is pretty dumb anyway. Applying reduction to say "everyone young person should know everything" is hubris. It's a practical division, at multiple levels. eg Specialization, profession, etc. Renaming (Molecular Dynamics) is just adding to the soup. Yes there is some overlap, but it's not worth trying to jam into the minds of students who dont have the drive or aptitude. re: Trying to teach everyone software development or CS
  - filoeleven 7y ago
    An example of reductionism in CS: one of the great minds of the field[0] adamantly believed that compiled programming languages were literally a waste of time, since the machine code they spit out was not as optimal as handwritten assembly and the compiler used extra computer time to build it. Can you imagine the state of CS today if that view had prevailed? Chemistry is a useful abstraction over physics in the same way. Hell, so is Newtonian mechanics over quantum mechanics, for that matter. The difference between these and my CS example is of course that the amount of stuff in physics itself is much more vast and undiscovered. The same is certainly true for biology, psychology, and sociology; and the exploration of their respective spaces are only hampered by focusing too much on the fields they rest upon. [0] I wish I could find the reference. I think it was Von Neumann.
ghaff 7y ago
One of the challenges with curricula generally is that there are a lot of dependencies and you sort of have to use a certain amount of rote memorization to jumpstart things. Organic chemistry in particular, which I did not get along well with, I recall as requiring a lot of memorization because at that level you just don't have the tools to figure out how reactions will progress from first principles. Even physics, if you haven't had calculus yet, you end up having to memorize a lot of formulas because you don't know how to derive them.
perl4ever 7y ago
In high school chemistry, we had to memorize the periodic table in the sense of symbol <=> name. I hated memorizing stuff, but I found a way to make it enjoyable - I wrote an adaptive flashcard program to use.
- catalogia 7y ago
  My highschool chemistry class required us to memorize that stuff, but they also let us use graphing calculators on every test... Memorizing it still pays off because it saves time, but I think a load of students didn't bother and just 'cheated.' (I'm not really convinced this is truly a form of cheating since if you look up the answer frequently enough you'll end up memorizing it by accident anyway. You can only look up Pb so many times before you start to remember it means lead.)

jcims 7y ago

Totally agree. The idea that chemistry is separate from physics is pretty dumb anyway. I'm kinda talking out of my blowhole here, but it seems the reason chemistry and biology are distinguished from physics is that there are a lot of emergent phenomenon that we didn't and in many cases still can't predict from the fundamental physics. But, it's still there. Maybe chemistry should be called molecular dynamics or something like that. Jazz it up a bit. Also, more explosions and experiments with fart gas.

Koshkin 7y ago
This old adage is called ‘reductionism.’
- jcims 7y ago
  TIL! Thanks
- izacus 7y ago
  And the obligatory XKCD: https://xkcd.com/435/ https://xkcd.com/435/
  - jcims 7y ago
    Nice!
tsimionescu 7y ago
But some sciences really do require a lot of memorization, and even if we could understand the entire world from first principles, biology would still remain a separate science from physics, especially in the area of anatomy and ecology. Perhaps one day we will be able to account for each biological process starting from physics, but that still won't help us find new species of orchids and which bees pollinate them. Even for chemistry, sure, you can use quantum mechanics to predict what combining hydrochloric acid with caustic soda produce, but that is far, far more difficult than remembering some valence for the few common elements.
Supermancho 7y ago
> The idea that chemistry is separate from physics is pretty dumb anyway. Applying reduction to say "everyone young person should know everything" is hubris. It's a practical division, at multiple levels. eg Specialization, profession, etc. Renaming (Molecular Dynamics) is just adding to the soup. Yes there is some overlap, but it's not worth trying to jam into the minds of students who dont have the drive or aptitude. re: Trying to teach everyone software development or CS
- filoeleven 7y ago
  An example of reductionism in CS: one of the great minds of the field[0] adamantly believed that compiled programming languages were literally a waste of time, since the machine code they spit out was not as optimal as handwritten assembly and the compiler used extra computer time to build it. Can you imagine the state of CS today if that view had prevailed? Chemistry is a useful abstraction over physics in the same way. Hell, so is Newtonian mechanics over quantum mechanics, for that matter. The difference between these and my CS example is of course that the amount of stuff in physics itself is much more vast and undiscovered. The same is certainly true for biology, psychology, and sociology; and the exploration of their respective spaces are only hampered by focusing too much on the fields they rest upon. [0] I wish I could find the reference. I think it was Von Neumann.

ghaff 7y ago

One of the challenges with curricula generally is that there are a lot of dependencies and you sort of have to use a certain amount of rote memorization to jumpstart things. Organic chemistry in particular, which I did not get along well with, I recall as requiring a lot of memorization because at that level you just don't have the tools to figure out how reactions will progress from first principles. Even physics, if you haven't had calculus yet, you end up having to memorize a lot of formulas because you don't know how to derive them.

perl4ever 7y ago

In high school chemistry, we had to memorize the periodic table in the sense of symbol <=> name. I hated memorizing stuff, but I found a way to make it enjoyable - I wrote an adaptive flashcard program to use.

catalogia 7y ago
My highschool chemistry class required us to memorize that stuff, but they also let us use graphing calculators on every test... Memorizing it still pays off because it saves time, but I think a load of students didn't bother and just 'cheated.' (I'm not really convinced this is truly a form of cheating since if you look up the answer frequently enough you'll end up memorizing it by accident anyway. You can only look up Pb so many times before you start to remember it means lead.)