In high school or before, were you taught what a scientific model was?

[xiphias]

desperance mentioned over in his LJ that he was disappointed that he was taught about the Neils Bohr "solar system" model of the atom, without any acknowledgement that people had already realized that atoms didn't REALLY look like that even before the invention of sliced bread.

I remember in my high school chemistry or physics class or something, we WERE told that "by the way, atoms don't REALLY look like this; the truth is a lot more complicated, but we still use this, because it lets us work out what's going to happen with electron shells and stuff -- even if it doesn't REALLY look like this, this is a useful model, because the math works on it, so we can use it to get the right answer." They didn't make a big deal about it, but they did hand out a photocopied paper with little pictures of what electron clouds, even though it wasn't on the test or anything. Still, it was at least MENTIONED. They at least MENTIONED that we work with models that are useful, which are usually simplified from what's really going on. Maybe we only spent ten minutes on it in the whole year, but it was there.

Was that something that was brought up in your primary or secondary school science education?

Comments

Swirly orbits of wrong

[roseydawn.livejournal.com]

I grew up in a third-world country and the Bohr model was taught as gospel back in the 1980s. No one told us that it was just a model - we were told that Reality Looked Like This. When I moved to Canada and studied chemistry, I was finally told that it was just a model and that things don't really look like that. I remember feeling very disappointed because I rather liked the swirly model of the atom.

Looking back now, I'm realizing that things were even weirder. Despite being educated in a third-world country, our math syllabus was significantly superior to Canada's. I know this because the placement test (to decide which grade of high school I should be placed in) was a joke - I don't think any of us scored below 90% and none of us foreign students placed in any grade lower than pre-university. I guess science moves at different speeds between the branches in some countries. :)

[metahacker.livejournal.com]

Yes, in Physics class (11th and 12th grade) at the least. "This isn't what really happens, but it's what we can solve, so we're going to look at that." Also in Earth Science (8th grade), I think, around climate model.

[stitchwhich.livejournal.com]

I graduated in 1975, so this is dated. No, we weren't told that the atom models we were using were not actually what an atom looked like. In fact, until I read your entry, I didn't know that was so.

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

Well, it's not THAT dated: they figured out that atoms didn't look like that in 1923. Unless you're over 108 years old, you COULD have been taught it in high school.

[wcg.livejournal.com]

Sister Albertus introduced us to simplified molecular models back in the 7th grade at St. Benedict's. She was a great teacher.

[jazzfish]

Huh. I definitely knew in high school (twenty years ago, ack) that the Bohr model wasn't what atoms really looked like, and I even knew that the simplified shell model (whatever it's called, the thing Dr Manhattan inscribes on his forehead) was an abstraction as well. Maybe we got sketches of the n- and p-orbital clouds in chemistry or physics?

I went to a really good high school, though.

[leafrider.livejournal.com]

No, not to my knowledge. I do remember that "solar system" model of atoms, and I have to confess that until reading your post today I didn't realize there was a better model. Since reading your post I looked it up and found this simple intro to what they really look like.

https://www.uwgb.edu/dutchs/Petrology/WhatAtomsLookLike.HTM

So thank you for the post. :)

I graduated from high school in 1974, in the US - California.

But I can't necessarily blame the school or teachers. I was a head-in-clouds kind of kid who avoided science and math like the plague. I don't recall anyone mentioning that the "solar system" model wasn't what atoms really looked like, but it was entirely possible that someone said it while I was gazing out a window at birds in a tree.

I'm much more interested in such things now, and I realize now that I was a bit emotionally immature for my age and might have been better off starting school about 2 years later than I did. Everything might have made more sense and been more interesting to me from the start. I had the brains for it, just not the interest.

[yehoshua.livejournal.com]

Let's see, in my public school education, I was taught:

• Human hair looks really weird under a microscope
  
• That AIDS was caused by gay people
  
• That anal sex will glue your rectum shut and all gay men end up having to have colostomy bags
  
• All the words to "Heartbreak Hotel" in Spanish
  
• A snapping turtle can take an adult man's arm right off

I don't think there was any mention of scientific models. It would have made it all hard and confusing.

Yes, I remain bitter.

[paper-crystals.livejournal.com]

I think college. My science and mathematics education in everything but middle school with pretty disgraceful except randomly here and there.

[browngirl.livejournal.com]

My high school AP chemistry teacher, in introducing us to electron orbitals, discussed previous models and touched on their strengths and weaknesses, but it wasn't until college that I recall explicit discussions of the difference between the object and the model (such as the anecdote of the scientist whose organic chemistry research was stymied because his physical molecular model set didn't replicate the inflexibility of actual carbon bonds.)

[metaphortunate.livejournal.com]

Yes we were. I was extremely lucky in my public schools: we got a lot of stuff, including lessons on how to write that have served me all my life.

[squishydish.livejournal.com]

We didn't spend much time on it, but it was at least mentioned in HS science, either physics or chemistry.
I remember my older sister hated HS physics because they'd teach something, then say, actually it's more complicated than that, here's another model, rinse and repeat...

[sashajwolf.livejournal.com]

Not in science, but in philosophy, as part of a unit in which we read and discussed Kuhn's Structure of Scientific Revolutions.

[oedipamaas49.livejournal.com]

Do you know the "Science of Discworld" books? They do a great job of talking about this; they call it "lies to children".

they also have the advantage of being books that kids can and do read ;)

I'm pretty sure it was brought up in my secondary education, though I can't remember a specific time.