Author: Jackson You

As a student coming from a science focused high school, I thought this semester’s seminar class would be relatively similar to the science courses offered there. My expectations were to learn about specific scientific discoveries, experiments, and thinking that impacted New York City. I expected to learn about a lot of scientific theory and discoveries from a textbook, but it was much more than that. This Macaulay seminar was extremely hands-on which I really appreciated. My favorite part was learning how to use a 3D printer. With today’s constant evolving technology, learning how to do 3D design and actually doing it was extremely educational for me. I also loved the biodiversity research project. It was amazing to see an entire school come together to collect data that we would all use to present. Science is also ten times more interesting and engaging when your hands get dirty to actually make, test, or discover things and that is exactly what we did. It was difficult, however, trying to find trend in the data to talk about. Though it was challenging, it was also extremely ambiguous which I really appreciated. I also really appreciated the mini lab demonstrations by Dr. Greer to show how magical science can be!

Lab reports are something I’m pretty familiar with. Coming from a high school specialized in science, we were required to write a lab report every single week for our weekly labs. Though the labs ranged vastly throughout the 4 years, there was always something to take away from each. Even though most of the labs had an expected result, it was still very interesting to physically make these results happen in a lab setting. We can always read about a subject through books or textbooks, but information tends to last longer when learning is more hands on. A 2009 study conducted by researchers at Purdue University found that middle school students who were taught about human impact on water quality through a hands-on learning method showed high comprehensions of the concept as opposed to only learning through textbook and lecture method.

I believe this is not only something that can be implemented in a science course. For example, it is possible to go on a field trip to a history museum for a history course. In particular, I remember a specific class that focused on the founding of the United States which took a more hands-on approach. Half of the class were designated as “nationalists” while the other half were designated as “patriots” and we had a class debate with each side arguing for their ideas and opinions. This was a very effective way of learning the topic because each student was extremely engaged in the debate and it made the topic a fun one.

To be honest, I was a little bit confused about the article for a number of reasons that I’ll explain below:

First, I wanted to get some context to the article by doing a bit of research on the writer. Lawrence Galton. After putting his name into Google, I realized that the top links were all links to Amazon books written by him. However, I could not find a comprehensive biography of the author or anything else. He did write a number of books, including “You may not need a psychiatrist, How your body may control your mind”, “Medical Advances”, “Truth About Senility and how to Avoid it”, “Truth About Fibre in Your Food”, “1001 Health Tips”, etc. There is something to be said about someone who publishes a lot of books, but I find it odd that there isn’t any information about personal life or specific professional life on Galton in the form of a biography.

Another thing that came to my attention is how technical the article is. I’ve always known the New York Times as a paper that aims to appeal to the general audience, hence a simplified read, but the article written by Galton relied heavily on scientific jargon that I feel the general public would find hard to understand.  Perhaps this may be because of just how the New York Times has evolved throughout the years. This article was written in 1971, more than 40 years ago. Compared to the popular articles by New York Times article shared by classmates from the first assignment, this article is definitely a lot more heavy.

Another aspect of the article that stood out to me was the large drawing of the molecular structure by Walter Hortens. I agree with Robert that the drawing was not really necessary for understanding the article. The article really did not refer to the image to explain its points. However, it did lead me to think about the various reasons for the author to include it. Perhaps it gives the audience a sense of credibility towards the author?

Overall, I thought the article was interesting. There were just multiple parts throughout where I scratched my head.