Recently I met during an event at my Alma Mater, the University of Nijmegen, my high school physics teacher. We discussed the chemistry curriculum and remarked that quite some chemistry students capture with difficulty the fundamental principles from thermodynamics. Needless to say that thermodynamics is one of those subjects that serve a chemist for a lifetime. In my humble opinion, one reason for this lack of retention may be the abstraction level in freshmen courses and that this might be improved by spending one or two introductory hours on the basic ideas of thermodynamics in a historic context. [Read more]

Published in category Science