On 1/26/07, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
Which set of chemistry teachings did you have in mind?
For example, I discovered a few days ago, talking to some friends of mine studying Chemistry at uni, that diatomic oxygen is, in fact, not double bonded, as my Chemistry teachers said it was.
I can understand the reason for the simplification, but they should at least say they are simplifying things.
Anything that isn't the full quantum-mechanical electron orbitals analysis of the chemical structure is oversimplification, but "works" for 99.9% of the chemistry that anyone ever does.
We still teach people Newtonian physics first, then Relativity if you reach college and take science major / engineering major level physics courses. Almost nobody remembers the fully relativistic versions of the equations of motion, because you essentially have to be a particle physicist or high energy physicist or cosmologist for it to matter.
The simplifications aren't wrong. And it's not wrong to teach them to people. It's wrong to not tell people that there is a more precise underlying theory, but I don't generally run into physics or chemistry teachers at any level who don't make that distinction.