So it happens that my kid is in 8th grade and is studying chemistry for the first time in earnest. As luck would have it, the kid’s teacher is of Haitian extraction and is on some kind of leave of absence either due to illness or possibly because 3 family members perished in the quake. I don’t know. This fellow seems to be a good teacher.
His replacement, however, is not very good. In fact, his replacement is … awful.
For the first time, I had a serious discussion with a principal about a teacher’s performance. The principal is apparently aware of the substitutes classroom foibles and sins of omission. The principal’s own son is a student in that class and so he has a personal interest in the matter.
So, after some time with the kid at the whiteboard in our basement last night, it dawned on me that I had completely forgotten how utterly strange atomic theory and the chemical phenomena that derive from it really are. It is all quite abstract and maybe even a little weird.
The curriculum gives some emphasis to understanding the concept of pH. Alright. But this requires some ideas about logarithms and exponents. Then there is the matter of chemical equilibrium. While kids are wrestling with the math, you are also trying to tell them that only a very small number of water molecules actually come apart into ions. But the kids need to be comfortable with the notion of ions and charge.
But, what makes hydrogen ion different from hydroxide ion, really? And why does hydroxide ion have the negative charge? How is it that acids corrode iron to form H2, but hydroxide does not? What does it mean to be an acid? What does it mean to be a base?
You can try to use structural models of sulfuric acid rather than line formulae like H2SO4 to appeal to the idea that these are little things with attachments that do things. One could argue that it is a bit more concrete that way- little structures with parts that are detachable. But as soon as you start drawing structures, you run into a rats nest of intermeshed concepts relating to bonds and lone pairs. Then there is the bloody octet rule, covalency, and orbitals!!!
For crying out loud!! How does anybody learn this stuff?? The learner has to absorb 20 abstract concepts almost simultaneously to begin to “get” chemistry. Even worse, if a chemist/parent teaches the kid about a concept, almost certainly it will not mesh with curriculum, leading to confusion and tears for the teacher and the student.
I taught orgo to college sophomores, but evidently 8th grade chemistry eludes me. I’m just too dense to grasp the level of abstraction they will accept. Oh! To have an hour with Piaget!
Lamentations on Chemistry 
One thing that might help is interactive animations. I warmly recommend Molecular Workbench: http://mw.concord.org/modeler/
Hi Gauss! I have a 10th grader (really) and a 6th grader, don’t I know what you are describing!
I agree with the math issue – it really comes up and bites people in Gen Chem at college. Success correlates very well with math ability – which may just reflect ability to think abstractly.
On the other hand – the other issues seem to be more likely from not telling the story in the proper order. It has to build in a natural way on concepts that get slowly introduced, multiple times until they make sense.
I had a colleague whose 7th grade daughter was quite upset that the electrons did not just fall into the nucleus. She was quite proud of her daughter. I’m sure there were quite a few physicists who felt the same way when Rutherford published his results.
I tutored intro chemistry a while ago and I remembered at the time that I had forgotten more basic concepts than things I had learned since then. You are right, there is a lot to remember, no wonder intro chem (and to a similar extent, organic) separates the men from the boys.
See http://www.redorbit.com/news/science/127024/chemistry_is_important_to_our_daily_lives/index.html for my personal manifesto about this.
The kids are denied primitive maths lest they be “harmed” (the able separated from the unable). Everything then flows downhill. Unlike intelligence requiring constant fueling, stooopidity is its own engine of creation.
How can a mountain lake exist if water flows downhill? How can ammonium nitrate exist, N(-3) with N(+5)? Local minima matter. LCAO model for light atoms, add VSEPR for inorganics. Yer gonna need a pile of loosely correlated memorization to do basic inorganic, then you are invincible. Thermodynamics proposes, kinetics disposes.
Nuclei are penetrated by s- and d-orbitals. A muonic heavy atom has it muon orbiting inside the nucleus. Interaction rules render all that non-productive, leptons vs. baryons. Electrons do fall into nuclei, big time – neutron stars, pulsars. Crawl over the rims of local minima and things change – detonated ANFO. Make the rims higher and things change – prismane; tetra-tert-butyltetrahedrane and reversibly its cylcobutadiene isomer. The best part of science is bending the rules in Pyrex.
Physical and theoretical chemistry are also valuable. They are Home Depots and Ace Hardwares for synthetic folk. “8^>)
Thermodynamics proposes, kinetics disposes.
I like that.
Or… you could attack. Have the substitute pedagogic engineer demonstrate competence by balancing this equation for charge and mass,
K4Fe(CN)6 + H2SO4 + KMnO4 gives
MnSO4 + Fe2(SO4)3 + K2SO4 + HNO3 + CO2 + H2O
HINT: Some of the coefficients boldy go into triple digits.
Oh gawd. I’d have to be able to balance it myself. The shame. The degradation …
One thing I’ve noticed in textbooks is a trend away from building one concept upon another and towards an “integrated” or “wholeistic” approach. It sounds good,but it sets up a lot of kids for failure. They simply must gain the math skills before they can do a few things in chemistry. That’s whiy colleges have the brilliant concept of prerequisite courses.
The other problem with current science teaching methodology is that legal liability has stripped classrooms of much of the hands-on experience we all enjoyed in high school. Gone are the good old days when you could get a beaker, put a dro of phenolphthalein in it, then throw a chunk of solid Na or K and run like hell when it exploded and the water turned pink. I may not remember my orbitals, but I remember that!
I suspected that you were a pyro. My suspicions are now confirmed. Welcome to the fabulous world of chemistry!