Singing Science

udderly writes " Wired is running a story about a University of Washington biology lecturer, Greg Crowther, who sings lectures. From the article: 'Crowther bursts into song to the melody of Sugar Sugar, the bubble-gum '60s tune - "Glucose, ah sugar sugar / You are my favorite fuel from the bloodborne substrate pool / Glucose -- monosaccharide sugar -- you're sweeter than a woman's kiss / 'cause I need you for glycolysis."' In college I used many different types of devices to help memorize information like this. Crowther has a page where you can download samples. Among my favorites are The Krebs Cycle and Come On Down (The Electron Transport Chain)."

Comments

Mnemonics

[Shimmer]

I'm all for using mnemonics to remember somewhat arbitrary information (Roy G. Biv, Every Good Boy Deserves Fish), but not for semantic cramming. If you need a song to understand the difference between glucose and fructose, then why bother taking the course in the first place? You're just going to forget everything you learned as soon as you complete the final exam.

Re:Mnemonics

[ltwally]

"If you need a song to understand the difference between glucose and fructose, then why bother taking the course in the first place?"

Many of us were forced to take non-major classes that we had no interest in, in order to get our degrees. I'm going to hazard a guess that you either never attended an institution of higher-education, or you attended a technical/trade school.

Also, one of the reasons that universities force you to learn so many things that you will later forget is so that your future employer knows that you are capable of learning these things. The knowledge itself is often secondary to the ability to acquire that knowledge.

It really works too unfortunately,

[technoextreme]

I can't get this dam song out of my head about snells. Signing n sub 1 sin theta sub 1 signing n sub 2 sin theta sub 2. Gosh darn it. I don't even remember the entire sign only the dam formula. Anway, here is a website from which I found the songs.
http:http://www.haverford.edu/physics-astro/songs/ >
Ps. I just had one of those I have no life epathanies.

Nice try..

[saskboy]

Nice try, but the Rolling Stones have been promoting Geology's Rock Cycle for decades now.

Memory devices work...

[ATeamMrT]

The worst teachers are stuck in one method. The best ones will explain a topic in multiple ways. I had one math teacher that used things like "Please Excuse My Poor Aunt Sally" to teach about equations- parenthesis, exponents, multiplication/division, addition, subtraction. To someone else, it might be a complex list of what to do first and rules. But he showed a small trick, and nobody missed it. I wish more teachers would take the time to find teaching methods that work, rather than passing the blame to students and telling students to "study harder".

It is one of the reasons dissection is so important in Biology classes. Kids can't learn by looking at a picture in a book of what the digestive system looks like. It is different to cut a frog open and see for yourself. It also stimulates the imagination in ways books can not. I remember looking at the cardiovascular system and wondering "Why do we have heart attacks? Why not just add a small pump at the inferior vena cava to help weak hearts. And if someone has a heart attack, the pump will act like a CPR machine, keeping blood flowing.

Teachers like this guy are a pleasure to have. They love their field. They feel a responsibility to reach all students, regardless of how the kid learns. I knew some smart kids in highschool who never made it that far in academia because they got stuck with book learning- read the book than take a scan tron. But when you talk with them, you realize they learn 10X as much as the rest of us when they see something done. I've seen this guy tear a carburetor apart and rebuild it, after watching someone else do it. But he could not do simple Chem 100 problems.

I wonder how many savants are out there who were pushed out of mainstream education because traditional book reading followed by test taking did not show their potential?

I think the anwser for education is to require a Ed.D instead of a Ph.D to teach the first four years of college. Let the Ph.D's do research. Just because they are expert in their field does not mean they know how to convey that information to others.

Singing Science Records

[fyoder]

Singing Science Records

My favourites are 'The Ballad of Sir Isaac Newton' and 'Why Does the Sun Shine'.

My favourite learning song

[jurt1235]

My favourite for learning to count in bin:

1100011 bottles of beer on the wall, 1100011 bottles of beer.
Take one down and pass it around, 1100010 bottles of beer on the wall.
1100010 bottles of beer on the wall, 1100010 bottles of beer.
Take one down and pass it around, 1100001 bottles of beer on the wall.
etc etc etc

Re:Mother of God

[JabberWokky]

Oh, c'mon... this is pretty durn standard stuff. I have a box of cassettes of this kind of music, and a rack of CDs. It's called Filk, and there's both Science and Science Fiction variants. Back before it had a name, it was just music done by scientists and professors. Tom Lehrer was singing about the elements, Wernher Von Braun and New Math starting in the late 50s, and I have a songbook of Medieval students songs that predates that by several centuries.

Heck, I've written songs about Polyethylene terephthalate and patch panels... they are things I work with and like. I also write and sing songs about corsets and myths and the SCA. Pretty much anything that somebody likes or is into, if they are a musician, gets written about. I have lyrics about the tetramanganese cluster in Photosystem II because my fiance worked with it.

It's not "nerdy", it's simply people singing about what they do, work and play with. Pretty much the same as all the songs about the railroad, playing baseball or about steelworkers, only these happen to be written by people in the sciences. If you're riding on a railroad, you write "City of New Orleans". If you're working with NMR spec, you write a song about spectroscopy.

--
Evan