Scientific Literacy

Glenn Reynolds links to an article lamenting the state of science knowledge among Americans, asking "What do they teach them in schools these days?" In grad school, I was a teaching assistant for three years in "physics for the English major" type classes. One thing I realized from that experience is that many students are so intimidated by science, they convince themselves they cannot do it and will go to great lengths to confuse themselves to fulfill their prophecy.

A couple of simple examples.

In the astronomy class, we were discussing nuclear physics. One can imagine the intimidation factor of that. In particular, we were considering whether certain nuclear processes were possible by balancing, for example, charge. What it comes down to, literally, is mathematics of the difficulty 1+1 equals 2, 1+1 does not equal 3. (On one side of the equation, there are two positive 1 charges, on the other side there is one +2 charge, so the question is does the total charge on the left side equal the total on the right?) So I had to stand in front of a room of college students and ask what 1+1 was, because they refused to believe, no matter how often it was shown and explained, that they could do nuclear physics, and since they couldn't do it, surely it wasn't as simple as what is 1+1. This was one of the hardest sections of the class, explaining 1+1.

In the same astronomy class, during an exam there was a question about shining a laser at Venus and detecting the return signal a certain time later, asking how far away Venus is. Students kept asking what formula they had to use because they couldn't figure it out. I asked them the question, you get in your car and drive to Springfield and back (this was in the suburbs of Boston) at a constant 60 mph and it takes 3 hours for the trip, how far away is Springfield? Amazingly, the same students didn't need a formula to figure it out. But ask the same question using science words and get the blank looks.