Category: Chemistry

Another Special Effect Based on Chemistry

The very talented Eric Bailey portraying Dr. Jekyll in Jekyll and Hyde: The Musical (edited photo by Michelle Mullins)

I just got finished portraying Sir Danvers Carew in Jekyll and Hyde: The Musical. I had never seen or read the show before, so I didn’t know what to expect. It turns out that it is more of an opera than a musical. Most of the lines are sung, and the music is hauntingly beautiful. The cast was full of incredible singers, so the performances were remarkable. I got the opportunity to sing a duet with the young lady portraying my daughter Emma, who is engaged to be married to Dr. Jekyll. I also got to sing a lovely quartet with Emma, Dr. Jekyll, and John Utterson (Dr. Jekyll’s attorney). The music was incredibly challenging, but with lots of help from my fellow actors, I managed to pull it off.

The superbly-talented director had developed some important imagery for the show. The cast is divided into “the rich” and “the poor.” Dr. Jekyll is part of “the rich,” but when he turns into Mr. Hyde, he is part of “the poor.” The rich obviously wore much better clothes than the poor, but the director wanted something else to symbolize the divide between the two, so he used colors. The set was lit with green when the rich were being highlighted, and all the rich people had a splash of green on their costumes. The set was lit with red when the poor were being highlighted, and all the poor people had red in their costumes.

With this in mind, the director asked me if I could make a “smoking potion” that turns from green (representing Dr. Jekyll) to red (representing Mr. Hyde). I said, “no problem.” Then he added that the actor portraying Jekyll and Hyde must be able to drink the potion. That turned out to be a challenge. However, drawing on my experience writing a chemistry book for homeschooled students, I came up with something that worked pretty well.

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NASA Has NOT Found the Building Blocks of Life on Mars

A “self-portrait” of the Curiosity rover on Mars: a composite of several images taken with the rover’s Hand Lens Imager.

The headlines are screaming it. NASA Mars rover discovers ‘building blocks’ for life: 3-billion-year-old organic matter, Curiosity Rover Finds Ancient ‘Building Blocks for Life’ on Mars, Building Blocks of Life Found on Mars, etc. etc. There’s only one problem. The building blocks of life were not found on Mars. I wish they had been. I think it would be awesome to find evidence of life on other planets besides earth. However, what NASA’s rover discovered on Mars wasn’t even close to the building blocks of life.

So what was really found on Mars? Not surprisingly, the title of the scientific paper that was published in the journal Science comes close to the truth:

Organic matter preserved in 3-billion-year-old mudstones at Gale crater, Mars

Now, of course, I think the “3-billion-year-old mudstones” is scientifically irresponsible, but notice the difference between the scientific article’s title and the title of the articles written by “science journalists.” There is no mention of life in title of the scientific article.

But wait a minute. Isn’t that just semantics? Doesn’t “organic” refer to chemicals that come from living things. Absolutely not! As I tell students in my elementary science book Science in the Industrial Age:

While organic chemicals are generally associated with living things, it is possible to make them from nonliving things…Scientists still use the terms “organic” and “inorganic” today to classify chemicals, but they do so based on the elements that make them up, not based on where they come from.

Now, of course, the news articles I linked above eventually get around to saying that it is possible for the molecules discovered on Mars to have come about without the presence of life. Even with that caveat, however, the news articles are still wrong, because the molecules discovered are not, in any way, the “building blocks of life.”

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The Final Mother/Daughter Comparison Between My Chemistry and Apologia’s Chemistry

In case you missed out on the first installment of this review, a mother and daughter have been comparing my chemistry course, Discovering Design with Chemistry, to Apologia’s chemistry course, Exploring Creation with Chemistry, 3rd Edition. This review came about because they had originally started using Apologia’s course, and it just wasn’t working for them. They started using my course, and it worked much better, as you can see in the previous installment as well as what you can read below. The comparison starts with the daughter’s perspective and ends with the mother’s perspective:

From the daughter’s perspective:

Last January, I wrote a comparison review for 3 modules of Apologia’s Exploring Creation, 3rd Edition, to 4 chapters of Dr. Wile’s Discovering Design with Chemistry. My overall view was that Apologia was very thrown together and confusing, while Discovering Design was more organized and enjoyable. In May of this year, I completed studying Dr. Wile’s Discovering Design with Chemistry, as well as reading over Exploring Creation; my original opinions remain the same as before. Though, there are a few more things I’d like to add in.

As I went through both texts, I discovered that the order of information and tone of writing is very important to how the student copes with the material. For example, Discovering Design is in conversational tone as if Dr. Jay himself were the one talking. He will often add in quick, funny or humorous things throughout the text especially when the topic starts getting heavy, which I find helps to release “chemistry stress.” Exploring Creation is also in a conversational tone, but it gets to be a bit confusing when a paragraph is giving an example using the pronoun “I,” and the student in this case has no idea who ‘I’ is.

In Discovering Design, Dr. Jay explains things to the point, builds on top of the material as chapters go on, and balances the difficulties of that material so that it doesn’t seem like too much. I can’t say any of this for Exploring Creation. While a few explanations are easy to understand, too often the book contains wordy paragraphs and unnecessary rules, and it’s difficult to grasp how any of the chemistry concepts taught are connected. In Discovering Design, you can’t wait to read the next section. In Exploring Creation, you can’t wait until you’ve finished the module.

I did come across a few frustrating things while studying Discovering Design. One was not being able to successfully complete experiments, because I couldn’t get the materials in the country where I live, and sometimes getting generally confused because, well, chemistry can sometimes be confusing. However, having said that, the experiments I was able to complete were excellent and helpful (For example experiment 10.4), the extra helps website helped overcome some of the confusion, and overall the course was really what I was expecting when I wanted to learn about Chemistry. I didn’t study Exploring Creation all the way through (On Your Owns and tests), but after just reading it, I don’t imagine a student would have a very good idea of the beauty of what chemistry really is; as Discovering Design does so well.

The last thing I can say is that Exploring Creation is like learning a bunch of mixed up chemistry facts, while Discovering Design is taking a thorough chemistry course.

S. White, student

From the mother’s perspective:

As we worked through Discovering Design, I found my thoughts were about the same regarding the teacher’s material. The fact that concepts are well-explained in the Discovering Design teacher’s manual helped a lot, as it has been a very long time since I have studied chemistry. Comparing the tests of the two texts, I especially noticed a difference in the weighting of the points for the test questions. In the Discovering Design tests, I felt there was a healthy balance between grading the math and grading the understanding of concepts, whereas Exploring Creation seemed to put too much weight on the math questions so that even if a student got everything right but two of the math questions, he could fail the test, which doesn’t seem to be right when a student has clearly mastered the concepts.

I would like to note here that Dr. Wile’s text is designed to take a normal school year, and as you can see, my daughter completed the entire text in 5 months. This was not because the text was too easy, but rather that my daughter dedicated 5 or 6 hours a day (and in some cases more) to chemistry in order to finish it before her graduation. I would not recommend this schedule to the average student.

L. White, teacher

A Mother and Daughter Compare Apologia’s Chemistry to My Chemistry

In the fall of 2014, Apologia released the third edition of its chemistry course. While I had written the two previous editions, they went with two different authors for their third edition. I reviewed it and couldn’t recommend it to anyone. Since Apologia allowed its second edition to go out of print, I thought that homeschoolers needed another option, so I wrote a new chemistry course, which Berean Builders published in the summer of 2015. Many people have asked me how I compare my new book to Apologia’s new book, but it is hard for me to do that, since I am the author of one and not the other.

In December of last year, I received an email from a mother (Leeanne White) who needed advice about chemistry. Her daughter (Sarah) was using Apologia’s new chemistry book and was really struggling. She had gotten through the first three modules and just wasn’t getting it. I suggested that she use my book instead. She decided that was a good idea. I also asked her to consider writing a completely honest comparison of the two courses. She agreed.

Well, Sarah and Leeanne have been through four chapters of my book now, and they both agree that it works much better for them. They wrote up a review (which contains both perspectives), and it appears below. They promised to write another review once they are completely done, but I thought people might want to see what they think so far.

Note: They finished their review. The final version is here.

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Two Videos About Density

I have been making some videos for the online courses I will be teaching this coming academic year. There will be more to come, but I won’t be blogging about every one of them. I do want to share two of them, however, because they are both very interesting. The first is about things floating in water. Did you know that some bowling balls actually float in water?

The same kind of reasoning used in that demonstration can be used to make a balloon full of air float:

I have done variations of the first demonstration several times, and the Coke/Diet Coke part is from an experiment the students do in their kitchen sink in my elementary course, Science in the Beginning. I had never done the second demonstration before, and I was surprised at how well it worked.

As I said, I won’t be blogging about every video. If you want to see them all, visit my publishers’s YouTube channel. I will be making several more over the course of the next year, so if you like them, you might want to subscribe to the channel.

Jay Wile, From a Student’s Perspective

A "portrait" of me, drawn by Jessica M.
A “portrait” of me, drawn by Jessica M.
I love hearing from students after they have taken a course or two from me and then gone on to pursue their goals. I enjoy each report and am thrilled that my courses meant so much to them. I do have to admit, however, that I enjoy some reports more than others. Some students credit me for their love of science, and that means the world to me! Others suggest that they couldn’t have been successful in pursuit of their goals without my courses. I tend to doubt that, but I appreciate the sentiment. Some students say that my courses have helped them in their spiritual life, and that means the most. There are times, however, that I get a report that is both meaningful and downright hilarious, at least to me! Such was the case a few days ago, when I got an email from Jessica M.

She wrote to tell me that she took my general chemistry course (which is out of print – I recommend using this one now) and my advanced chemistry course several years ago and is now in college, pursuing a degree in nursing. She says that college chemistry is going well, and it is bringing back a lot of good memories, so she wanted to thank me for being an integral part of her homeschool-high school years. Of course, that meant a great deal to me. However, I have to admit that I was more intrigued by something else she wrote:

As a homeschooler, you were one of my first “favorite professors” (next to my parents and Andrew Pudewa). Extrapolating from your often-humorous, lighthearted writing style, I invented a jovial stickman-character of you who often appeared in the margins of my books to make comments (together with the three Chemistry Nerds and Mr. Mole).

If you have ever experienced a class with Andrew Pudewa, you would know that it is no insult to finish behind him in a student’s “favorite professors” list, but that’s not what really intrigued me. I wanted to learn more about this “jovial stickman-character,” so I asked her if she would mind sending me some examples, and when she did, I spent the next several minutes laughing out loud!

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The Reviews (At Least Some of Them) Are In!

The cover of my new chemistry book
The cover of my new chemistry book
If you haven’t been reading this blog for a while (and didn’t notice the ad on the right), you might not know that I have written a new high school chemistry course: Discovering Design with Chemistry. My previous course, Exploring Creation with Chemistry, Second Edition, was updated by different authors, and I didn’t like the result. Consequently, I thought it necessary to write a new course so that home educated students could have a scientifically accurate, user-friendly, up-to-date resource with which to study chemistry at the high school level. I already discussed the user-relevant differences between my old chemistry course and my new one, so I won’t rehash that. Instead, I want to share some reviews and comments the new course has received.

I will start with the most recent one, which comes from a teacher who is facilitating classes that use the book. She discusses the fact that my old chemistry course prepares students very well for chemistry at the university level, and then she says:

Wondering about Dr. Wile’s new Chemistry text? We’re about 1/3rd of the way through the text at two class day programs. There are new experiments, which are a great addition to the topics. The topics go a little more in depth and are in a different order than the previous edition.

I highly recommend his new textbooks, including his new elementary series which I’ve taught to 5th/6th grade students for over a year now.

I am really glad that she mentioned the new experiments, because I think they are the main reason to use my new chemistry course instead of a used copy of my old chemistry course. The old chemistry course is still a good one, but the experiments in the new course are significantly better. If you would like to see some of them, this student is posting videos.

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Dr. James Tour Tells Us How Little We Know About the Origin of Life

James Tour is a giant in the field of organic chemistry.
James Tour is a giant in the field of organic chemistry.
A few days ago, a reader asked me to review an article by Dr. James Tour, as well as a video of a talk that he gave. I was initially hesitant to do so, because Dr. Tour is a giant in the field of organic chemistry. For example, he is the T. T. and W. F. Chao Professor of Chemistry at Rice University. For those who aren’t familiar with the academic structure of universities, only the most elite professors are appointed to a position that is named in honor of someone else. This is called an “endowed professorship,” and anyone who holds such a position is in the upper echelon of academia. He has won several awards for his outstanding research accomplishments, including being named by Thomson Reuters as one of the top ten chemists in the world in 2009. Not only is his research outstanding, but he is also an excellent teacher, having earned the George R. Brown Award for Superior Teaching at Rice University in both 2007 and 2012. What could I possibly add to the words of someone so knowledgeable and distinguished?

After reading the article, however, I do think I have something to offer. Because of the nature of what he is trying to discuss, his article is very, very technical. There were times, quite frankly, when my eyes glazed over a bit. I didn’t listen to a lot of the video (it seems to cover the same ground as the article), but it is also quite technical. For those who do not have the fortitude to make it through such a technical article or talk, I thought I could summarize it.

The “take home” message is straightforward: We have no idea how some of the most basic molecules necessary for life could have been produced by unguided processes. Why does Dr. Tour feel compelled to write a detailed article making a statement that, in my mind, is quite obvious? He explains:

Those who think scientists understand the issues of prebiotic chemistry are wholly misinformed. Nobody understands them. Maybe one day we will. But that day is far from today. It would be far more helpful (and hopeful) to expose students to the massive gaps in our understanding. They may find a firmer — and possibly a radically different — scientific theory. [Note that “prebiotic chemistry” refers to the chemistry that occurred on earth before life existed.]

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What are the differences between my old chemistry course and my new chemistry course?

The cover of my new chemistry course.
The cover of my new chemistry course.
If you have been reading my blog for a while, you might know that I recently wrote a new chemistry course. The publisher of my old chemistry course came out with a new edition, and they did not consult me. This happened with another course, and the result was excellent. However, the new edition of the chemistry course was riddled with errors. Many of the errors weren’t just typos or minor mistakes in the solutions to the problems. They were serious scientific errors that would put students at a disadvantage in their future studies. I asked the publisher to make my old chemistry course available for those who wanted to avoid such errors, but it refused. As a result, I wrote a new chemistry course, Discovering Design with Chemistry.

I was recently asked on Facebook about the differences between my old chemistry course and my new one. While I have touched on that issue in a couple of other posts, I thought I would provide a thorough answer to that question here.

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