Exploring Creation With Chemistry 2nd Edition Review Questions 11

NOTE: If you happened onto this link start, it was a preliminary review based on only three modules. The total review is now available.

An Erlenmeyer flask is a typical piece of glassware used in chemistry experiments. (click for credit)

I write this web log post with a somewhat heavy center. Apologia is in the process of producing Exploring Creation with Chemistry, Third Edition, which is an update of the loftier school chemistry form I wrote. Updating science books is a good thing, and when Apologia updated the Human Anatomy and Physiology class that I co-authored, I was very happy with the outcome. The new edition of that course is better than the one-time edition, no question about information technology. I wish I could say the aforementioned affair about the new edition of this chemistry course. So far, however, I cannot.

Now delight understand that I haven't seen the entire updated form yet. Although Apologia's catalog indicated the new course would be bachelor in July, they have delayed the release of the book. To help families who program to use the new edition for this academic yr, they have posted the outset three modules of the grade online. That's what I have reviewed. There were sixteen modules in the original course, and bold this holds true for the new edition, that ways I have reviewed only about 3/16 of the course.

In add-on, please sympathize that since I wrote the original course, I am probably non every bit objective as I would like to exist when evaluating the new edition. Afterwards all, I wrote what I idea was the best explanation of general chemistry that I could perchance give. Perhaps I can't be satisfied with any update. However, I was very satisfied with the update of the Human Beefcake and Physiology course that I co-wrote, so I really hope I am being equally objective equally possible. I am certainly willing to believe that there's a better way to teach chemistry than what I adult. I just don't think this is it.

Finally, I accept to say that I know i of the authors of the new edition personally (Rusty Hughes), and I consider him to be an fantabulous teacher. I also really like him as a person. I don't want him (or the other author, who I exercise not know) to take offense. It's just that many people accept asked for my thoughts on this new edition, and I experience compelled to write them.

The first thing I noticed while reading the new edition is that they inverse the order of topics discussed. That's no big deal. There isn't any "magic" guild in which to teach chemistry. The authors of this new edition are taking the "atoms first" arroyo, where they teach students about atoms and their structure earlier discussing the chemical science that atoms do. That's a valid arroyo. Indeed, it is the approach taken by the textbook I am using in the higher chemistry course I am currently teaching. So the change in order doesn't carp me at all.

The 2d affair I noticed was that they seem to exist trying to cram more data into this new edition. Module i, for case, deals with measurements and units, which is common in virtually chemical science books. In the original version of the course, that'south the only thing covered in Module i. In the new edition, Module 1 includes all of that plus a discussion of the scientific method. In the new edition, Module ii covers everything that is covered in Module 3 of the original course, but it also contains what is covered in the first section of Module four in the old course.

Cramming more information into the form could be problematic, simply I won't know for sure until I see the course in its entirety. A typical school textbook covers more material than you would ever cover in a year, allowing the teacher to encompass what he or she thinks is most important and skip the material that he or she thinks isn't of import. The problem is that about homeschooling parents don't take whatsoever idea what to cover and what to skip, because they don't know the subject very well. Thus, information technology is best for a volume focused on homeschoolers to cover just what i needs to cover in a year. The coverage of the original volume already provides students with excellent preparation for college chemical science, so adding a lot more than textile could effect in a course that asks the students to do more than the typical, higher-bound high school pupil can accomplish in a twelvemonth.

The third thing I noticed was an attempt to "dress upward" the book with extraneous Christian content. This is common in many textbooks designed for Christian schools, but I tried to avoid information technology as much equally possible in the books I wrote. In the original chemical science form, there are times when I highlight the amazing design of chemical systems as evidence of God's handiwork. I also hash out Bible verses that are relevant to the topic being covered, such equally talking about Genesis nine:eleven-17 when I cover rainbows. However, I try to do such things only when they relate directly to the topic at hand. In this new book, they tend to add Christian content when the human relationship between the content and the topic at mitt is tenuous at best.

For example, Module 3 in the new edition discusses diminutive structure. As office of that, the students are taught the wavelike characteristics of light: frequency, wavelength, aamplitude, and speed. The authors then add a word of Edward William Morley, an important chemist. They talk over the fact that he set a tape of chemical precision that has never been bested, which is true, but it has zippo to do with calorie-free. To justify including him, the authors say:

We accept included Edward Morley at this point due to his piece of work in another area of science. He was known for helping Albert Michelson measure out the speed of light. This inquiry was a significant building cake for Albert Einstein to develop his theory of relativity.

This is just not true. Albert Michelson measured the speed of calorie-free with incredible precision in 1879 and published the effect in 1880.ⁱ This was before he started working with Morley, which was in 1882.²

Michelson and Morley teamed up to see if earth's movement affected the speed of light. At that time, physicists thought at that place was a space-filling substance, called ether, that permeated the universe and was at rest. This ether was supposedly the medium through which calorie-free waves traveled. Since the earth was supposed to be moving through the ether, the earth'southward motility should touch on the speed of light. Nonetheless, that effect was idea to exist too modest to exist detected by actually measuring the speed of calorie-free. Instead, Michelson and Morley built a device called an "interferometer," which split light into two beams, caused the lite to travel split up paths, and then combined the lite again. They looked at how the combined beams interfered with one another. Had the light beams moved at unlike speeds, they would produce an interference design.

Thus, Morley had aught to practise with measuring the speed of light. He measured the way lite beams traveling along different paths interfered with one another. In the finish, Michelson and Morley saw no interference. This indicated that either the ether did not be, or information technology moved with the world. Physicists weren't willing to believe the latter conclusion, because that would indicate there is something special near the globe. Thus, they concluded that the ether didn't exist. This conclusion, not the speed of light, is what helped Albert Einstein develop his theory of relativity.

To me, the fact that the argument is incorrect isn't as important as why I retrieve the authors made the statement to begin with. I think the real reason the authors wanted to discuss Morley is that he was a devout Christian. The authors wanted to give a Christian quote from him, so they forced his biography into a topic for which he actually has no relevance and so had to simplify his great accomplishments to the point where they were actually maxim incorrect things. This is a big problem with trying to "dress up" a book with extraneous content.

As a cursory aside, this same section of the volume says that Michelson was an atheist. I think that is another oversimplification. The historians I have read indicate he was agnostic. John D. Barrow, for example, says:³

Morley was deeply religious. His original training had been in theology and he only turned to chemistry, a cocky-taught hobby, when he was unable to enter the ministry. Michelson, by contrast, was a religious agnostic.

To characterize an agnostic as an atheist is, once again, a vast oversimplification. Of grade, it's difficult to know a homo's heart, so perchance the historians I accept read are incorrect. Withal, I would call back proverb something like, "Michelson was not religious" would be more consistent with what we know.

There are other examples like this, but I want to move on to some other mistake introduced into the new edition, considering it is important. In an attempt to clarify a word of cathode ray tubes, the authors add an illustration, Figure 3.3. They prove a cathode ray tube and a magnet, and they show the cathode rays bending in the presence of the magnet. This is all true. The trouble is that they label the magnet with a positive finish and a negative stop, and they depict the figure as follows:

This diagram shows the path cathode rays accept in the presence of a magnet. Observe how they bend toward the positive plate of the magnet.

Magnets practice non accept positive and negative sides. If they did, a charged particle at rest would be attracted to the side with the opposite charge. However, charged particles at rest are not afflicted by magnetic fields. Just moving charged particles are affected by magnetic fields. Thus, magnets practise non have charges. They have poles. This is an of import difference.

There are other problems with this new edition, but they are minor compared to the ones I take discussed.

And so what'due south the lesser line? Right now, I can't say for sure. Based on these three modules, I don't retrieve this edition is an improvement over the quondam one. I retrieve it volition be harder for homeschoolers to use, and information technology definitely contains some errors. At present, of course, I could be wrong most the first function of that statement. Perhaps homeschoolers will find this book easier to use. Every bit far as the errors go, they can exist corrected. Thus, I don't yet know whether or not this book is a large plenty step backwards to make me write a new high school chemical science course for homeschoolers.

For that, I need to await to hear from the real experts: homeschoolers who effort to employ the new edition. If you lot cease up using it, I would honey to hear your thoughts. Yous can contact me through my website.

REFERENCES

1. Albert A. Michelson, "Experimental determination of the velocity of light fabricated at the U.S. Naval Academy, Annapolis," Astronomical Papers, ane:109-145, 1880.
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2. Oxygen Send to Tissue XXXII, Joseph LaManna, et al, ed., Springer 2011, p. 6
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3. John D. Barrow, The Book of Nix: Vacuums, Voids, and the Latest Ideas About the Origins of the Universe. Random Business firm Digital 2002, p. 136
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Source: https://blog.drwile.com/exploring-creation-with-chemistry-3rd-edition-my-initial-thoughts/