CATHERINE DRENNAN: I of course want my students
to be as excited about chemistry as I am.
And, you know, I feel like MIT is a relatively serious place.
But the MIT students are really fun people.
And they're willing to make fun of themselves
and be a little geeky.
And I love that.
And so whenever I can kind of encourage something
like that in class, I always try to take advantage of it.
And one of the things I like to ask
them is sort of if one geek is going to propose marriage
to another geek, do you really give them a diamond?
Or maybe graphite.
Because, you know, one is more kinetically stable and one's
more thermodynamically stable.
And what's the best gift?
And that often-- then they can discuss which they think.
And then I'm like, actually, neither
because what you should give them is the Green Lantern ring.
And then someone can say, what about Lord of the Rings ring,
you know.
And so you have-- you can sort of bring in these [? funs, ?]
but, you know, your arguments are kind of
based on chemical principles rather than other things.
So if you can really bring in sort of the fun humor
that MIT students enjoy, and they're always with me on that,
and I love that part.
So I'm always looking for ways to kind of have something
be a little bit more fun, especially in some
of-- and some of the units, I feel, really lend themselves
to these fun examples.
And other ones are a bit more challenging.
But I want to make sure that everyone has something in.
And if I find something online or whatever,
I really try to use that in my class.
And I found these videos of dogs teaching chemistry,
which at least some of the students love.
There's always a few MIT students who are like,
I wish you would just stick to the facts
and straight derivations.
But for the most part, I think, attendance
would suggest that students come and that they're engaged
and that they're seeing these little things.
And I've discovered that it really
helps people remember, when you do something a little bit
different.
One of my favorite things to do is when I teach about buffers,
I don't know why, so many students
have trouble with the concept of buffering, acid base
titrations.
It's just really hard for a number of people.
So I thought over the years of ways
that I can really get them to remember certain things.
And some of it, I can make fun.
Others is have to figure out how to just make
them memorize certain things.
And really just get them there where they can just do this
off the top of their head.
And so when I talk about a buffer,
I always want to make the point that you
need in your [INAUDIBLE] buffer, you
need something that's a weak acid,
and the conjugate of that is a conjugate weak base.
And you can't just have an acid, or just have a base.
That won't buffer.
Because you need something.
If you add acid, you need something
that will buffer it to keep the pH constant.
If you add base, you need something
that will-- so it has to go both ways.
So I like to dress up.
And I have the abbreviation for a weak acid
taped on the front of my shirt.
And the abbreviation for the weak base
taped on the back of my shirt.
And I said, I am a buffer.
And I'm an acid, and then I turn around, I'm a base,
and I turn around again.
I'm an acid.
And I just twirl around the classroom.
And I said, I want this engraved in your brain
that a buffer has to have both a weak acid and a weak base.
And if I keep twirling like this,
you will try to purge this memory
from your brain of Professor Drennan twirling
around the classroom as an acid and a base,
but you won't be able to.
It'll be with you for the rest of your life.
You'll be on your deathbed going please,
can the image of Professor Drennan
twirling around in that silly t-shirt
that she made with lab tape, please, can it leave my brain
now?
But no, no.
It will be with you forever.
And when I do that, the students do better
on the acid base problems.
So I am OK with really embarrassing myself.
Whatever it takes, I go that extra distance
because I want them to remember that.