SCIENCE IN SCHOOLS

Evening Post, Volume CIII, Issue 56, 8 March 1922, Page 7

SCIENCE IN SCHOOLS

THE STRAIN OF CHEMISTRY

NEGLECT OF THE MICROSCOPE.

(MtOM OPIt OWN CORRESPONDENT.)

LONDON, 10th January.

Sir Ernest Rutherford has been elected president for tho corning year of the Science Masters' Association, in succession to the Master of Balliol.

At the twenty-second annual meeting of the association, held during the education conference in London, a practical discussion on physical chemistry in schools was opened by Brigadier-General H. B. Hartley, of Balliol, who reported that in recent years practical chemistry had enjoyed a striking record of successes in the extension of the atomic theory, which had culminated in the theory of the construction of tho atom, the development of tho molecular theory and tho law of mass action, the theory of solution, tho extension of tho doctrine of energy, and in other directions. Hitherto the subject had been treated rather as- ( a separate branch of chemistry, but the time had come to incorporate such of the generalisations as they were sufficiently" sure of in the main body of chemistry, in order to help in breaking down tho old distinction between inorganic and organic chemistry. He did not desire tho introduction of a fresh and special subject, but to co-ordinate physical chemistry with a great many chemical phenomena. One of the great difficulties in teaching chemistry was the tremendous strain it involved on the memory and ji slighter strain on the reason. There were such an enormous number of facts that they must make tho utmost use of any generalisations they could, and up to the present that had not been done. They must get away from the idea that analysis should be taught as a series of routine operations in order to do certain things with a certain a'moimt of accuracy. They could make all the operations appropriate with exactly the same training in accuracy, and it was much easier to justify their insistence on accuracy. He had been much struck during the past threo years by the results of setting problems which did not involve qualitative analysis, but what happened to known substances when mixed, and how they reacted with one another. Tho bovs who bad been trained in formal qualitative anafjsis did less well than those trained by the problems. There was an advantage in tackling all theso things as problems in rather an unconventional mannsr. It was a great danger to conventionalise, because ono of the first duties of teaching was to seek for originality. The moment at which these methods , could be introduced must be a matter for individual decision. It was the co-ordination of tho elementary and the advanced teaching right through the boy's course that mattered and made for intellectual economy. In this way they would make chemistry of moro value as a subject of education. In the. course of discussion Mr. Fisher (liton) urged that schoolmasters should uso the microscope moro than is the ense. It wtiß a much-neglected instrument in the teaching of chemistry.