Bringing Science and Math Into Writing?

I am an eighth grade English teacher. As much as I love my subject and believe in the value of skillful writing, I also believe that there is a terrible lack of interest in the sciences and maths among students in general. In some sense, I believe English to be a support subject for the others classes at this grade level. At my school, the average science classroom has time for labs and note taking, but reading and writing on the subject (beside textbooks) is usually limited. Math is in a similar situation: they have time to learn a concept and practice, but not to linger on possibilities. Therefore, I have two questions for the readers of Slashdot: which books / shows / movies caused a curiosity towards these subjects when you were young, and what suggestions do you have for incorporating these subjects into writing?

How does it work?

[fishyfool]

Doesn't matter what it is. It can be the latest and greatest gizmo like the iPhone, or a simple older gizmo like a dial telephone or a blender. Question how things work. Plant those questions in your young students minds, and then harvest their observations.

Reading

[VernonNemitz]

Read to your kids when they are too young to be able to do it themselves. This will at least teach them that fun things can be found in books. If you can then direct them toward science fiction, such as Tom Swift or Heinlein's juveniles, an interest in math and science becomes a likely side-effect.

Biographies of scientists and mathematicians...

[regularstranger]

Reading about the life of a certain scientist or mathematician was important for me. Knowing that those kind of people exist (all I knew was sports prior to my discovering mathematics, astronomy, and physics), and knowing about their work made me want to know more. Make a list of scientists and mathematicians. Assign each student to one, and have them read a biography about that person. Have them choose a writing topic, and then have them give an in-class presentation so that they can share information about the scientists and mathematicians to the rest of the class. You should have no trouble filling out a list. The ones I read about when I was young included Marie Curie, Einstein, Fermi, Newton, Euler, Gauss, and Bohr.

Re:MacGyver

[farkus888]

I think you are wrong. watching the show I saw what appeared so cool its practically magic and immediately wanted to know why it worked so I could do it and be cool like him. may not be true for everyone but like I said, it worked for me.

A noble quest ...

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm an electrical engineer who's been in industry for 30 years (you can figure out how old I am). In addition, I was about 6 years old when I determined that I wanted to be an engineer. With that as a bit of background, I'll try to answer your questions...

What books/shows/movies influenced me...

Books:

    The "Alvin Fernald" books - about the boy inventor

    Popular Mechanics - how stuff works

    Popular Science - sort of like Pop Mech, but substantially more cerebral

Shows:

    Nova - this was "after the fact" but still kept my brain a chunkin

Movies:

    James Bond, Matt Helm, Our Man Flint - aside from the other aspects, the gadgets were fascinating

And although you didn't specifically ask about it... for those that grew up in 60's, there was also NASA and the space program. Even if I didn't want to be an astronaut, you still spent a lot of time thinking about how those machines worked (and oggled a bit over those shots of mission control on TV).

To address the second part of your question, how to incorporate this into writing... hmmm....

    This is going to be something that's more difficult to approach. First, English is NOT a precise language. Mathematical formula, chemical equations, etc., are precious. At the same time written language is always a bit more ambiguous. I'm not saying that its not important (it is), but rather, you can't simply apply it everywhere.

    In particular, you need to use spoken/written language to convey your thoughts and ideas, however at the same time it is usually imperative that some of these thoughts be conveyed using other notation (e.g., mathematical equations, chemical formulae, etc.).

    I think, what you want to instill in your students is that this can be fun. When I was in college we had to take "Technical Writing" during our senior year as a degree requirement. The instructor I had was GREAT (I wish I could remember his name). The thing that made him great was that he taught by teaching you the "mechanics" of how to do something (i.e., he didn't dwell on stuff like grammar, etc.). That's not to say that this didn't come through, but rather that the delivery method was geared towards engineers. It was fun! And nearly everyone in the class LOOKED FORWARD to the next class.

    I wish you much success and I hope this helps!

Flatland

[Anonymous Coward]

Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions [wikipedia.org] is an 1884 novella by Edwin Abbott Abbott, still popular among mathematics and computer science students, and considered useful reading for people studying topics such as the concept of other dimensions. As a piece of literature, Flatland is respected for its satire on the social hierarchy of Victorian society.

Some more thoughts

[RotateLeftByte]

A few books (apart from the Asimov, Clark etc SF that has already been mentioned.

    Surely You're Joking Mr Fenyman
    The Man with No Endorphins

  Although technologically quite dated, the SF novels by Fred Hoyle.

  I don't know if the transcripts or videos are available in the USA but the UK) Royal Institution Christmas Lectures are great vehicles for stimulating a child's interest in Science and Engineering.
They try to pose the 'What if?' question.

However much of the writing I have to do as part of my work is 'dry, technical and totally uninspiring'. (Reports, Specifications etc)

Get your children to express their imagination and be creative in their writing. SF (classical SF anyway) with a sold basis in Science and Fact can be a good platform to get kids to let their imagination run riot.
Why not let them have a go at writing a screenplay for a Dr Who episode? or something similar?

I think back in total horror at the 500 word English essays I had to write in School. As I am dyslexic these were a real bind. There was no stimulation of though or any need to be creative. One time I let my imagination run riot and instead of 500 words, I produced over 5000. IT was a proper story with a beginning, middle and end. I thought it was brilliant. I got an 'F' for my efforts (it was not 500 words approx) but won the School prize for best story of the year.

I write stories even today. Mainly they are for my (and my grandkids) enjoyment. They are what can only be classed as in the Classic SF genre. I do it for relaxation and fun. I also write everything in Longhand first.

Good Luck in your quest

Rhetoric

[crumplez]

All I remember about my 8th-12th grade english classes were the hours wasted analyzing rhetoric. As soon as I stepped foot in college, I took classes on technical communication, writing research papers, etc. In other words, learning to write without ambiguity. Without rhetoric. If you want to do a service to science and math, encourage writing assignments with tangibles and applicability. Give assignments like writing useful instruction sets, targeting audiences (this is a big one) and targeting different cultures. There is zero value in analyzing Shakespeare. None.

Re:This culture is fucked

[bradcb212]

My cousin was a college football player and a damn good one. I don't want to name names but he's played in NFL Europa and although his chances of getting in the NFL currently are slim it's not a reflection of his abilities.

He has worked his ASS off all his life to get as far as he has. He's damn good and his records are evident of that. Unfortunately, the pro-team that picked him already has a good player in his position and it looks as though his chances of making it pro are slim. Perhaps he'll get lucky, my thoughts and hopes are certainly with him...

In your message you state that sports pros are thugs (it seems you're especially picking on football)... I'd say you've watched too many movies. You should realize that calling them thugs is in itself a reflection of our cultural understanding of football (or any inherently violent sport) players. Though there may be some bad eggs amongst them, they are not all Michael Vicks...

Sports = entertainment... These people risk their health every time they step onto the field. They turn a simple game into an amazing demonstration of athleticism. You seem to be blaming society itself for elevating such things to a high standing, but I challenge you to sit and watch people playing scrabble, chess, or any other mindgame for hours at a time...

For the record, I don't disagree with your "smart = uncool" argument... I just think calling them thugs is an unfair stereotype, in the same way that it's unfair to assume you're "uncool" just because you're into science or math.

Why?

[kamapuaa]

I went to college in English and computers, I have a job which involves writing and computers.

And I absolutely disagree with the precepts your question. As an English teacher, you should be doing your best to teaching the English language, and an appreciation of the English canon. It's almost like you're sabotaging your own field, and hope to stress other subjects! The sciences already receive far more government spending and grants than the arts; anyway it's not your place to correct perceived imbalances.

Plenty of nerds here will advise you to read Heinlen or some shit. But the prose of science fiction (or really, of any genre fiction) is for shit and the metaphors shallow, and really don't add anything to being a well-rounded, broadly-educated youth. They're the literary equivalent of watching "the Matrix" and "Independence Day" in a marathon session, with no real depth or artistic value. Furthermore, the sort of people who would get anything out of science-fiction are the sort of people who would read it anyway.

I think people have too little appreciation for culture, here in China my friends (many in the Computer field) can rattle off 8th century poetry, and have a much deeper appreciation of history and culture. How many Americans can quote even a single poem? Honestly I think it's terrible that an English teacher has so little regard for their own subject. If you were the teacher of my child I would demand them being transferred out, and I strongly believe you're in the wrong field.

Issac Asimov

[Maximum Prophet]

Issac Asimov wrote almost as many Science books as Science Fiction. Among the best are "Asimov on Chemistry" and "Asimov and the realm of Algebra". The 2nd is so good that paperback versions sometimes sell for > $50 on eBay. (It's out of print) I read it in 8th grade at the beginning of Algebra class and sailed through the rest of the year.

Re:Science Fiction - FANTASIA MATHEMATICA

[anon coward]

I loved this in high school. Still a great read.

FANTASIA MATHEMATICA :: Clifton Fadiman (editor)

Partial selections from Contents:

        * "Young Archimedes" by Aldous Huxley
        * "Peter Learns Arithmetic" by H.G. Wells
        * "Socrates and the Slave" by Plato
        * "The Devil and Simon Flagg" by Arthur Porges
        * "--And he Built a Crooked House" by Robert A. Heinlein
        * "No-sided Professor" by Martin Gardner
        * "Superiority" by Arthur C. Clarke
        * "The Captured Cross-Section" by Miles J. Breuer, M.D.
        * "A. Botts and the Moebius Strip" by William Hazlett Upson
        * "The Tachypomp" by Edward Page Mitchell
        * The Island of Five Colors" by Martin Gardner
        * "A Subway Named Moebius" by A. J. Deutsch
        * "The Universal Library" by Kur Lasswitz
        * "Postscript to `The Universal Library'" by Willy Ley

Re:MacGyver

[rainlord]

I agree with that the science is a bit off in those shows, however, this made me think of a particular episode I saw recently. To skip the storyline it was basically this:

McGuyver goes to visit a school where his old science professor teaches. The son to the science professor is also in the school and is trying his damned hardest to live up to his dad's standards, but fails as his father (the teacher) is not being a good father and is never satisfied with an A when there's an A+. In any case, all the science students have a final project, it's building a barrier/blockade to prevent others from entering a door. So there's a hallway, 6 doors, 6 different methods of locks. Some doors have a peep hole to see inside the room. The task is to break the door scientifically and enter the room.

Example locks from the show:
1. It's time based, door won't open until clock reaches X hour
2. It's 10 locks, some when turned left are locked, some when turned right are locked, you don't know which, endless combinations to get in.
3. Two glasses are on a scale inside the room balancing each other out. Tipping one glass over will unlock the door.
4. Looking through the peep hole you see a huge metal plate on a pole blocking the door, the pole is hooked up to a garage opener.

The kid of the teacher in the show had door 4, and the short story is that the "really smart kid in class but that hates the other guy cheats and listens on how to open the door".

To break the doors they did this:
1. Hooked up some electrical thing to the door that made the clock run faster. Voila, door opened in minutes instead of hours.
2. On the side of the locks along the door frame, the guy put magnet and poured metal dust between the magnet and the door. On the locks that were closed, the dust would stick. Thus he know which way to unlock it.
3. Used a high frequency modulator to shatter a glass inside the room.
4. (This one isn't exactly science, but it's interesting.) When the viewer looked through the hole, he actually saw an exact miniature replica of the room, but the big blocking thing was in the opposite open location. So when the evil kid managed to replicate the frequency for the garage door opener, the room in fact locked, but the miniature opened it's mini-version. The door had been open the whole time.

So, McGuyver isn't all bad all the time. What I'm getting is this:

I've bought many books on many subjects intending to learn from them. I get bored, super fast, and the book was a waste. I watch someone do something scientific that has a logical explanation, I immediately start to think of "wow, what kind of door could I build?", "hmm, I wonder how that problem could be solved (such as, opening one of the doors before I saw the solution), etc. Learning by doing is very strong, it's proven over and over again that if people get as much hands-on as possible with a subject (combined with other stuff of course), they learn and question things at the same time.

I think anyone would find that episode interesting. Remember, everyone loves booby traps! How can you make science a booby trap? You probably could in many different ways. One of my favorite teacher was my science teacher. He would always get electrical shocks (serious ones) from various things he was displaying. For some reason, the fact that he was just crazy about science made me love going to those classes, because I never knew what was going to happen, and if something went really wrong while he was doing it, he's ask us "Ok, what just happened there, and why?". It made us think, and I know for a fact that we all learned tons.

Hope that helps and that this isn't modded into oblivion :)

Re:MacGyver

[phaunt]

To take an extreme example, learning on which button to push to start a machine is not science - and never will be :-( .

Actually, it is. Science is about making hypotheses on how things work and then testing them, a process known as the scientific method.

As a nice example, consider this [xkcd.com] comic, and don't forget to read the tooltip text that appears when you hover over the image.

Jurassic Park

[garett_spencley]

It might sound a little corny but Jurassic Park actually created my interest in science-fiction, computer programming and science in general. I saw the movie first and besides being an entertaining thriller with some cool special effects it had no effect on me at all.

Then I read the book a couple of years later. I was around 13 or 14 and sick at home for a couple days. I read through it very quickly and I just remember how despite being a nut, Ian Malcolm was the one character who seemed to have a down-to-earth and realistic point of view on the whole situation. I also remember how cool it was that Crichton gave actual examples of computer code to support the story. It sparked my interest in computers and programming and logical, scientific thought in general.

Afterwards I convinced my grandmother to help me buy a computer and I spent the next few years going from pothead rocker to nerd teaching myself how to program the best I could.

Without having read that book my life would have turned out quite differently.

If you're trying to appeal to the average kid who watches far more movies than they do reading books, why not use something from pop-culture that was made into a successful movie ? Like most books vs. movies the two are rather different and so it would be difficult to impossible for one of the students to do any kind of report or test based on the movie.

It also has the advantage of demonstrating how powerful science can be. It's science fiction but it does a good job of coming off as plausible (if not then no one would have asked afterwards "could we do that?", even if the answer is "no because we haven't found such DNA still in tact"[1]) and it also goes to show how "cool" science can be. It deals with computers, biology, science fiction and logical thought and even touches on scientific ethics every once in a while. Over all it's a very entertaining book that most young people should enjoy reading while also doing a good job of advertising what science and math has to offer.

[1] Yes I realize there's several other reasons that it's still fiction, as well.

Re:You're doomed

[failedlogic]

I would agree that a child' teacher and parent(s) can be an incredible influence. That was my experience more so than any other movie, TV show or book. Its not as simple as if you read this or watch that you'll want to do science obviously. I would say that it can unlock different pathways of thinking about things. I remember as a kid figuring out/thinking about natural and human events (and not understanding the science of things) just after being influenced by media.

There's other factors at play here too... what is the learning environment, what neighborhood do they live in, what is income of parents, child's IQ, natural intuition, ability to solve problems, explore the environment, ask questions. They might all play a miniscule role but all add up.

My father is a biochemist. I decided to study in university the natural sciences partly because he showed me some of the 'cool' stuff he did as a kid as did his coworkers. This still has an influence on my to this day ... but I changed course of study. But as I'm still curious, I still read a lot of science literature etc.

If anything, I think its most imporant that students being to realize the importance of math at the junior high level as they start doing algebra. When we asked "Why we needed to know this?" questions, almost all our math and science teachers rolled their eyes and said - because its on the exam, or you need to know this if you want to be x or y in a real smart ass tone of voice. Every single time. We didn't realize that algebra and calculus played such a vital role in statistics, economics, electronics, computers, business, social sciences. etc. We were listening for an informed response. Never got one.

Re:Science Fiction

[Anonymous Coward]

"The Parrot's Theorem" by Denis Guedj is a great read. Age-appropriate for 8th graders. It's a novel delving into the history and philosophy of math. A novel about someone who is not a mathematician but who becomes deeply involved with mathematics as he tries to solve a mystery. From a review (http://www.maa.org/reviews/parrotsthm.html) "Why did maths begin in Greece and not somewhere else?" Does everyone know the story of Bhaskara and his daughter, Lilavati, and that he named for her his great book on his life's work, a list of mathematical problems? In the section on noneuclidean geometry we read about Menelaus' explanation of the difference between flat and curved planes: "A triangle spread onto the skin of an orange would be 'bigger' than the same triangle placed onto the leaf of an orange tree." Again, in discussing noneuclidean geometry after a ski trip, Lea proposes the following postulate for euclidean geometry: "For any given foot, there is only one possible ski and to that ski only one parallel ski."

Follow this up with "Sophie's World" by Jostein Gaarder, a parallel jaunt through Philosophy.

Re:Reading

[bcrowell]

If you can then direct them toward science fiction, such as Tom Swift or Heinlein's juveniles, an interest in math and science becomes a likely side-effect.

In the 1970's, I grew up on the Heinlein juveniles, and would read a Tom Swift book when I couldn't find anything better, although they were terribly dated even by then. The trouble is that the Heinlein juveniles are getting dated as well, and are disappearing from library shelves, and in general young adult SF is getting to be an endangered species. Walk into a Barnes and Noble and look for SF on the YA shelves -- you'll have a very hard time finding any. Part of this may just be that there are fashions in fiction, and right now the fashion has swung toward fantasy. Another issue may be that crewed space travel used to be the most important trope in SF, and we're now finding out that it's much, much more difficult than anyone imagined ca. 1950. To kids these days, I think crewed interplanetary travel comes off like kind of a corny joke, like ray guns, flying cars, and world government. It's one of those things that just didn't happen. Kids these days also have a lot more options, including movies and video games. When I was a kid, Star Trek was about it; there was such a paucity of SFnal options on TV that I'd watch Creature Features [wikipedia.org] on broadcast in a desperate attempt to get my SF fix.