| You can't judge the value of a degree course by the number of contact hours | Robert Woolfson Any student willing to engage will get good value for moneyThe Browne review into the funding of higher education has led to a debate on whether a university education provides value for money. In the last three months, there have been two comment pieces by arts students complaining about the "paucity of teaching" within their degrees and suggesting that the disparity between arts and science contact hours should be reflected in the fees.I'm entering my third year of a chemistry degree at the University of Manchester and I would not be surprised if, as a result of the Browne review, science undergraduates are asked to pay considerably higher fees without any real debate about whether they actually get more value for money than arts students.Last year, my fees "bought" between 15 and 20 contact hours a week. Eight hours of lectures, nine of labs, along with regular tutorials and workshops. I got the chemicals I needed to run my experiments, the support I needed to do them safely and the journal subscriptions necessary to place my experiments in context. So far so good.And what experiments did I do? The same standard set of experiments that were performed last year and will be performed next year. That's not a complaint; learning the basic techniques is an essential part of any science degree. But it does preclude original thinking; all my assessments to date have involved "right" answers that can be logically deduced from the available knowledge.By comparison arts students, if they are lucky, get six to eight hours of lectures, seminars and tutorials a week. Instead of labs and workshops, they get extensive reading lists: they are "paying for the privilege of reading textbooks". So for three years and almost £10,000 in tuition fees, what do they really get?Well, for one thing, they get a sounding board for their ideas. Once arts students have worked through their reading list, they're going to have ideas about what they've read and how these ideas fit into the grand scheme of things. At university, they get access to a knowledgeable faculty and, through discussions, can clarify and better express their ideas.Their fees also pay for the supply and maintenance of the huge collection of books necessary to develop the required depth of knowledge – otherwise known as the library. It's a telling fact that at the main University of Manchester library, there is part of one floor devoted to science and nearly five wings devoted to the arts.Another, more abstract, way of looking at value for money is by examining the skills learned through a degree. Again, arts students apparently don't get value for money. What do they learn? How to read a book? How to analyse a theme? Compare that to a science student who has potentially learned the basics of probing the nature of the universe.Yet the majority of graduate entry jobs simply require a degree, irrelevant of specialisation, so there must be something valuable about an arts degree. All students are essentially taught the same skills; the ability to work self-sufficiently, a toolkit of problem-solving methods and the skills and confidence to apply it in unknown situations.The more you put in to your degree the more you get out. Those who take the time to seek out lecturers and use all the resources their fees pay for get far higher value for money than those who simply cruise through. Also, whether you're studying 10th-century Norse poetry or the stereochemistry of heterocyclic molecules, degree-level study requires a stupendous amount of work to reach the standard required.Arts and science degrees are different but equal, and equally valuable. So please, stop demonising science students because we spend more time in labs and less time in the library.University teachingTuition feesHigher educationArtsUniversity fundingLecturersRobert Woolfsonguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
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Why tequila is a girl's best friend The discovery that he could make diamonds from Mexico's favourite tipple changed this physicist's lifeEver since our research was first published, people who hear about it for the first time just can't help laughing. Well, the fact is that most sane people would not dream of trying to turn cheap tequila into diamonds. In fact, at most of the scientific conferences I have attended, the first response to the reading of any paper on the topic is laughter, and a lot of it. But then the audience quietens down. There is no doubt that this research makes people laugh … and then think.I had never heard of the Ig Nobel prizes until I was called and informed that I, together with the two other authors of the research, had been nominated. At the beginning of the conversation, I thought it was just an ingenious prank, but after hanging up, I checked the internet.On the Ig Nobel prize site, I read the phrase "Research that first makes people laugh, and then makes them think" and realised that the call was probably legit … sort of. As it turned out, the prize has given me an even greater opportunity to deliver a message to students. I usually tell them: "Whoever thinks that science is a dry subject (pardon the pun) is wrong: science can be fun." I go on to explain how Mexico's favourite alcoholic drink can be subjected to different pressures and heat treatments making it turn from liquid to gas, and finally to a solid, in the form of diamond micro-crystals.I began experimenting about 14 years ago with synthetic diamonds (made by a technological process, as opposed to natural diamonds, produced by a geological process) from hydrocarbon gases such as methane as prime material. Hydrocarbon gases are formed basically by carbon and hydrogen atoms. Then, three years ago, we produced diamonds from liquid organic compounds like acetone, methanol and ethanol. Working with ethanol, I noticed that the ideal compound is about 40% ethanol and 60% water, and this composition is very similar to the proportion used in most tequilas.So, one day I went to an off-licence off the campus and bought a bottle of cheap tequila. I used it under the same experimental conditions as for a test with ethanol and water, and obtained positive results.Turning tequila into diamonds may sound funny, and inspire jokes about alchemists in modern labs, but the discovery could yield interesting results. The team is currently focused on improving the quality of the diamonds. Tequila contains about 150 different substances, most of which are formed during fermentation and distillation. These substances give the drink its typical flavour, aroma and taste.As a result, the diamonds are almost unavoidably contaminated. To carry our investigation to a happy end, the deposited tequila diamonds must be free of any chemical contaminant that could obstruct its performance during specific applications. At the same time, one must not dismiss the possibility that some contaminant might just help to improve the diamond's performance for some application. But applications will only suggest themselves when the process yields a high-quality diamond film.We can, however, anticipate that the first applications might appear in the electronic industry, where our tequila diamonds could be used as semiconductors, in, for example, the fabrication of high-power semiconductor devices, computer chips and optical devices.If I hadn't bought that cheap tequila bottle to probe its performance as prime material in the production of synthetic diamonds, we probably would not know that tequila naturally has the perfect mix of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen atoms to form diamonds.Some members of the scientific community in Mexico and elsewhere believe that the kind of recognition afforded by the Ig Nobel prizes should not be bestowed on serious scientists, but my belief is that any important discovery or scientific achievement, whether it's funny or not, deserves recognition. The nine genuine Nobel laureates who presented the prize to us – such as Martin Chalfie, winner of the 2008 Nobel prize for chemistry, who doubled as the prize in the "Win a Date With a Nobel Laureate" contest – seemed to think so, too.I've been asked many times whether I am going to be able to make enough diamonds to turn myself into a billionaire. Unfortunately, the answer is no, because the diamonds are so small – on average, a millionth of a millimetre – that they can be observed only by using an electronic microscope. That's not very practical for engagement rings, necklaces or tiaras.But I have no doubt that, for years to come, these tequila-based diamonds will still be generating laughs, since, after all, tequila diamonds are forever, too.• Dr Miguel Apátiga is a physicist at Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México's Thin Film Laboratory for Applied Physics and Advanced Technology, in Juriquilla, Querétaro, México This year's Ig Nobel prizes will take place at Harvard University on Thursday. The ceremony will be broadcast live at 12.30am GMT on Friday at http://www.youtube.com/improbableresearchResearchHigher educationChemistryScience prizesguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
TV review: Horizon: What Happened Before the Big Bang? and Wild Britain with Ray Mears What was the universe like before the big bang? A big Swiss cheese fondue, according to one scientist on HorizonWhere did everything come from? How did it all begin, the universe and everything? Easy. There was a big bang, 13.7bn years ago, since when the universe has been expanding, right? Well, that used to be correct. But now a bunch of pointy heads are beginning to question this, and Horizon: What Happened Before the Big Bang? (BBC2) attempts to put their thinking across in a way that might make some sense to those of us whose heads are less pointy.Before the big bang? Isn't that like before the beginning of everything? Don't tell me it was God, after all? Don't be daft. But the problem with big bang is that it's all effect and no cause, everything from nothing, which is philosophically difficult. And big bang is mathematically problematic too. Like if you go backwards, cramming everything into a smaller and smaller space, you eventually get to a space that isinfinitesimally small. And, apparently, in mathematics invoking infinity is the same as giving up, or cheating.There are further difficulties – such as when you get really, really small, gravity becomes repulsive (yuk) rather than attractive (mmm). To be honest, I can't quite remember why that's a problem, but it is, believe me. Big bang? Big sham more like.So what's the answer then? What was there before, or instead of, the universe? Well, it depends who you listen to. This one dude says there are various ways of defining nothing. His own interpretation of nothing has convinced him that there was a before, and that the appearance of matter did not start the clock of time. Someone else says our universe owes its existence to a previous one which had the misfortune to collapse in on itself. And then Professor Andrei Linde, my favourite, says everything was emmental. "You have Swiss cheese, OK? And in Swiss cheese you have these bubbles of air, OK? So, just imagine the cheesy part of it is heavy vacuum and the universe expands, and these bubbles appear inside, and it looks like an infinite universe inside." Hmm, to be honest I'm struggling a little with that one. So the cheese is the nothing, and the holes – which you might expect to be the nothing – are actually the something; it's almost like the inverse of emmental. Anyway, I think I get it: big bang wasn't the start of it at all, just the end of something else, which had been going on for ever, and the universe just appeared out of what Professor Linde calls the cheese of eternal inflation.No, of course I don't really get it. It's all a big fondue, inside my head. But it doesn't really matter. It's done in a way that you can go with it until it all gets a bit fuzzy, and then just marvel at the questions that are being tackled. At the fact that there's a building in Canada that looks like a mathematical problem itself which is full of people whose job is to sit around pondering these questions. And that they still use blackboards and chalk there. And that somewhere else, in Ohio, is the biggest vacuum chamber in the world, which has 8ft-thick aluminium walls and takes more than a week to empty of everything, by pumping out the air and then freezing the remaining molecules. It's a cathedral of nothing. Fascinating.Wild Britain with Ray Mears (ITV) is easier. He's in the Forest of Dean, looking for stuff to look at, and to eat. A salad of wild garlic, golden saxifrage, wood bittercress and cherry blossom anyone? Mmm.He finds a goshawk, and a sleeping dormouse which has to be the most adorable thing in the world. Well, until the little stripy baby wild boars appear. I want one, Daddy, get me one, right now. (But be careful, son, says Daddy, look at its mother; wild boars, they're like partners – when you get them, they're lovely and cute, but then they get big, and hairy and grunt.)There's something very nice about Ray Mears, comforting almost. I like his encounter with an adder. A lot of TV wildlife people today would have pounced, grabbed it by the back of the head, held the writhing serpent up triumphantly, forced open its mouth to show its venomous fangs. Not Ray. He just looks at it asleep in the sun, admires its diamond marking, then watches as it slithers slowly into the bracken. Respectful, that's what he is, and respect is as important in the Forest of Dean as it is in the inner city.TelevisionDocumentaryAstronomySpacePhysicsSam Wollastonguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
Vital Signs: Patterns: Report Paints Portrait of Costliest Patients Some of the sickest patients can run up hospital charges as high as $18,000 a day, with average stays of almost three weeks, according to a new government report. feeds.nytimes.com |