Good Problems

My honors class (non-science majors) is up to eight students. Last week, it had seven and the Honors Program secretary called me and offered to cancel it if I didn't want to teach a class that small. If I didn't mind, she said the director wanted to let it run. So do I mind? Uh...No-o.

The first day, I tried to find out a little about what the students already know about physchembio. Good thing too - several had taken an AP class in high school. A few more had an honors class in high school. One had taken a semester of college physchembio. And highest math level? Two with trig, a bunch with pre-calc, and one with calculus. Nice.

To find out how much they remembered, I gave a quick assessment: "Define/describe these five basic terms/concepts from physchembio." They worked individually for awhile, then I broke the class into two groups and had each group repeat the assessment on a new form. It works well - they talked about science and reviewed what they already know - I find out what that is.

And what do they want to learn about? Here is a sampling: Is ethanol going to save the world? Will a killer asteroid hit the earth? Stay tuned.