3 ms·
Chemistry education must change to help the planet
- jleyank 5y agoHS education can be done computationally for the most part, as waste disposal has been a concern since the 60's or 70's. Also liability might "encourage" glass labs rather than lab glassware. College education is more difficult, as my semester of Orgo lab was intended to actually have people make things successfully. Some amount of lab work will still be required unless it's a purely computational form, which won't help out "real" chem majors -> grad school. Grad education is either "nothing in the lab" or "live in the lab". But I assume that's a small fraction of the discussion, and the purpose of those PhD's is to make something new (or via a new method). And remember the quip: Chemistry involves carbon-containing compounds, Biochemistry involves carbon-containing compounds that move. And a chem lab filled with mostly pre-meds is already quite exciting. No need to add more experiments involving reactive or poisonous metals. The damned solvents can get all excited with a little encouragement, let alone the products. And remember kids, cheap synthetics can be dissolved with the appropriate choice of solvent! And unless the pre-med curriculum has totally changed from ancient times, it's not the undergraduate chem majors that's the problem. My major, famous university in the mid 70's had 20K students or more. We had 8 chem majors my year. Why on earth would people take time-consuming courses that were somewhat difficult if they were not required for the pre-xxx program??