Expanding Horizons
Friday, March 4, 2011 at 08:56PM 
This weekend a colleague and I will participate in Expanding Your Horizons, a program that encourages young women to pursue careers in science, technology, engineering, and math. We are running an activity for 11-16 year olds that involves grinding up spinach leaves, extracting the organic molecules, and separating different colored pigment molecules using thin-layer chromatography. We made this handout to show them what they'll be looking at. This is how I imagine it going down. We explain to them that spinach is green because of all of these colorful molecules that are made by spinach plants. They say, "Wow! We see colors because of chemistry? That's awesome. But my physics teacher says that seeing colors is optics and that has to do with physics." "Nope," we say, "Your teacher doesn't know what he or she is talking about. Chemistry is all that matters." "Oh, okay. So do molecules like these make strawberries red, and blueberries blue?" "You bet!" We say. They get excited. The wheels start turning. One of them says, "If molecules make them look a certain way, are there molecules that make them taste a certain way, and feel a certain way?" "Yes, and yes." We say. Another one says, "Are there molecules in my t-shirt that make it this color?" "Yes, synthetic dyes are molecules!". Them: "Is chemistry everywhere?!?!" Us: "It's everywhere!!!" Them: "YOU ARE BLOWING OUR MINDS HOW CAN WE LEARN MORE?!?!?!?" Us: "STUDY CHEMISTRY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"
Or, something like that.
Reader Comments (2)
That sounds like a lot of fun.
Also, have you seen this? Do you think it's the same for science?
That's interesting! I wasn't a fan of the Slate article it linked to, but it did make me think about my own students. I'd say in my classes the breakdown of students who routinely ask and answer questions is about 50/50 males to females. It never occurred to me that it might be different if I had a Y chromosome. So, I don't know. Maybe next semester I should pull a Yentl. I'm always a little skeptical of studies like the one they described. I wonder how many times the experiment was conducted and with how many different male and female math majors. When it comes to human studies there are so many variables. Anyhoo it's really interesting. Thnx for the food for thought!