Elementary school textbooks

Before moving on I want to show you a drawing of an atom that one often finds in elementary school textbooks and reference books for laypeople. Figure 1.3 shows protons and neutrons in the nucleus surrounded by electrons moving in orbits not unlike the orbits of planets around the Sun. 

Lay out everything according to some measure of difficulty, then start with the easiest and move to the most difficult. This strategy builds directly on the principles of task analysis that underlie learning hierarchies. The approach has some advantages, but the danger is that the most difficult topics will never get covered because earlier topics take more time than expected. Moreover, it obscures the fact that difficulty is not a unidimensional characteristic. What is difficult for one student may not be difficult for another. This approach is seen quite often in elementary school textbooks. 

Summary This chapter on basic chemical principles should serve as a review if you have had a pre-AP chemistry course in school. We assume (and we all know about assumptions) that you know about such things as the scientific method, elements, compounds, and mixtures. We may mention elementary chemistry topics like this, but we will not spend a lot of time discussing them. When you are using this book, have your textbook handy. If we mention a topic and it doesn t sound familiar, go to your textbook and review it in depth. We will be covering topics that are on the AP exam. There is a lot of good information in your text that is not covered on the AP exam, so if you want more, read your text. 

In a first approximation the 70 years of Ya.B. s life can be divided into four periods 1914-1930 — childhood and high school 1931-1947 — the Institute of Chemical Physics, the study of adsorption, catalysis, phase transitions, hydrodynamics, and, most importantly, the theory of combustion and detonation with application to rocket ballistics, and the first papers on nuclear chain reactions 1947-1963 — work on the creation of a new technology, nuclear physics and elementary particle physics, and a textbook, Higher Mathematics for Beginners 1964-1987 — astronomy, including application of the general theory of relativity, and cosmology. 

A thermodynamic course in which the chemical potential was introduced in the manner described was first proposed in 1972 by G. Job [1—4], Since then, the approach has been successfully applied in introductory lectures in thermodynamics at the Universities of Hamburg and Karlsruhe, Germany. It was also adopted in H.U. Fuchs textbook The Dynamics of Heat [5]. Because of the elementary intuitive interpretation of the quantity the concept can be easily adapted to all levels of education. It is already a part of textbooks for schools in Germany [6] and Switzerland [7]. It also plays an important role in the textbook Physical Chemistry - An Introduction with New Concept and Numerous Experiments [8] for undergraduates now in preparation. For strengthening of the understanding theory is complemented by more than a hundred illustrative, simple and safe demonstration experiments. 

Among the elementary textbooks intended for the gymnasium schools that appeared in the early part of the twentieth century, some referred to or made use of the periodic system. This was the case with a book written by Julius Petersen (1865-1931), a polytechnically trained chemist and former assistant of S. M. Jorgensen, who in 1908 was appointed professor of chemistry at the University of Copenhagen. Petersen followed the tradition by emphasizing the successful... 

As seen from the perspective of Danish chemists, the periodic system was of importance primarily because of its successful predictions of new elements. It was this feature that provided the system with a measure of credibility and authority. Because the predictions were associated with Mendeleev and his version, rather than the versions of Meyer and others, the periodic system was invariably associated with the name of the Russian chemist. Whereas the periodic system did not appear prominently in Danish academic textbooks in chemistry between 1880 and 1900—and in some cases did not appear at aU—it was introduced in elementary textbooks at a relatively early date. By 1910, most Danish students in the gymnasium schools would have encountered the system, if only in its most rudimentary form. On the other hand, both in university- and gymnasium-level textbooks, it typically appeared isolated from the systematic description of the elements and their properties. 

This part almost reminds one of Mendeleev s distinction between elements and simple bodies, which played an important role in his discovery of the periodic law, even though Ikeda did not mention the periodic law in this elementary textbook. In his textbook for secondary schools, Shinpen Chugaku Kagakusho [A New Secondary school Chemistry Book], published in 1898, Ikeda articulated this distinction more clearly. He explained the periodic law in the last chapter of the inorganic chemistry section. This textbook must have had some influence on the contents and structure of later chemistry textbooks in Japan, including the outline program of instruction for the secondary schools of the Ministry of Education in 1902. It is also noted that after this textbook many textbooks emphasized the distinction between elements and simple bodies, including Takamatsu s revised chemistry textbook. ... 

On the history of science education in Japan, see, for example, Hori Shichizo, Nihon no Rika Kyoikushi [The History of Science Education in Japan], 3 volumes (Tokyo Fukumura Shoten, 1961). Hori Shichizo (1886-1978) was an educator of science in primary and secondary education and had participated in the compilation and editing of various textbooks of science in elementary and secondary schools for the Ministry of Education for a long time before World War II. 

---