AU: Notes

[Joshua Bernstein]

The textbook bears the simple title Biology. A stamp on the inside cover proclaims this book number 15. There aren't enough copied for each class to have one, so the students have to leave the textbook in their desk for the next class.

In the margins of the Introduction to Biology chapter is a scribbled note: we all know what an experiment is

[Dr. Sean Neville]

Truly, it was an indictment of their entire education system, as well as their priorities as a community, that the school couldn’t secure enough copies of their textbooks to give one to every student. Sharing textbooks with members of every class meant that none of the students could take the books home with them, and ensured that students who required additional help or who learned better in a less traditional learning environment would never engage fully with the material.

With all of that, who could fault students for choosing to write in the margins or doodle rather than giving the lessons their full attention? Given those conditions, lectures about the importance of achievement sounded more like lip service than real concern about their education.

In the margins beneath the first note, written in pencil rather than pen, was a reply.

Not everyone does. Some of the other kids are struggling. And besides, almost nobody seems to understand science in the real world.

[Joshua Bernstein]

Matter

....If the involved atoms are sharing their electrons equally, then the charges cancel each other out. However should the sharing be unequal, then the atomic bond gains a charge and becomes polarized...

this explains the current political atmosphere

....Since hydrogen requires another electron to achieve stability, it will forcibly bond with other atoms to form a polar hydrogen bond....

wow I'm glad I'm not an electron

[Dr. Sean Neville]

Beneath the notes regarding bonding in matter, an additional note had been added,

I don’t think the electrons mind. That’s how they interact; it’s natural to them.



Energy

In physics, energy is a property of objects which can be transferred to other objects or converted into different forms, but cannot be created or destroyed. The ability of a system to perform work is a common description...

This reminds me of humanity. We can do terrible things to each other that might diminish us but it doesn’t disappear.

All of the many forms of energy are convertible to other kinds of energy, and obey the conservation of energy. Common energy forms include the kinetic energy of a moving object, the radiant energy carried by light, the potential energy stored by an object's position in a force field,(gravitational, electric or magnetic) elastic energy stored by stretching solid objects, chemical energy released when a fuel burns, and the thermal energy due to an object's temperature.

There are other types of energy, but we probably won’t learn about that in class either.

[Joshua Bernstein]

Beneath the notes on energy was written but we can destroy one another. If you diminish someone else's humanity can you make your own disappear?

And

this is enough types of energy! I can't even keep this many straight.

[Dr. Sean Neville]

The notes continued throughout the margins of the section, as their conversation grew increasingly responsive to one another, more than to the material itself. The sole saving grace was that the teachers didn’t have time to inspect the books, which allowed the writers to get away with it.

You can’t destroy even your own humanity. You can put a blight on it, but what makes monsters real is that we choose to be monstrous to each other, not that we eventually lose our humanity through bad deeds. Even then, we’re bad people, maybe monstrous people, but people nonetheless.

Followed by

Have you thought about using flashcards? They’re helpful for memorizing lists.

[Joshua Bernstein]

I use them for Hebrew class. I never thought about using them for science, too. That's such a good idea!

The next chapter was entitled Obtaining Energy.

The progress of food through a typical food chain starts with the producers, which have the unique ability to take materials from the environment and, using energy from the environment, produce compounds that store that energy in a usable molecular form...

That sounds like something out of a scifi movie

As fuel works its way up a food chain, it never is completely transferred from one level to the next, continually being lost to the environment in the randomness of heat...

Well that's a downer

[Dr. Sean Neville]

The other member of the peanut gallery didn’t respond to the compliment. There wasn’t much room left on the page for notes as it was, and the author, whoever it was, didn’t feel smug enough to memorialize a “you’re welcome” to a “thank you” that had never been written explicitly.

In the next chapter, the note written beneath the other note in clearer handwriting read,

It’s a basic fact of life. You can’t have science fiction without science fact.

Scribbled under the next note,

You think it’s a downer? But it’s so interesting how energy costs energy.

The food chain's length is a continuous variable that provides a measure of the passage of energy and an index of ecological structure that increases in value counting progressively through the linkages in a linear fashion from the lowest to the highest trophic (feeding) levels.

I thought they replaced these with food webs a few years back...

Apparently, updated textbooks also remained outside of the budget, alongside individual textbooks for each student.

[Joshua Bernstein]

You seem to know an awful lot about science. Am I writing to the teacher? Is writing in the book going to get points docked from my final grade?

[Dr. Sean Neville]

I’m not the teacher. I don’t think the teacher would write in the textbooks. All of the teachers are so stern about that.

Technically, the person writing the notes couldn’t fault them for it. The under-funding had to put intense pressure on the teachers, since their jobs were on the line. Compulsory education meant that the students would continue to attend school regardless of who taught them.

I just like science. And I learn a lot about it from other people. Besides, if you go down for writing in the textbook, then I’m going down with you.

They hand-wrote the answers on tests and homework. Matching handwriting between assignments and the book wouldn’t be hard, particularly since the books were assigned to a particular desk. The teacher only had to account for one student per class period.

Besides, the writer obviously didn’t care too much about it. Otherwise, they wouldn’t have replied to the margin notes in the first place.

[Joshua Bernstein]

The next several notes had clearly been erased and rewritten several times.

Science is my worst subject. I wish you could teach me to like it.

[Dr. Sean Neville]

Producers, such as plants, are organisms that utilize solar or chemical energy to synthesize starch. All food chains must start with a producer. In the deep sea, food chains centered around hydrothermal vents and cold seeps exist in the absence of sunlight. Chemosynthetic bacteria and archaea use hydrogen sulfide and methane from hydrothermal vents and cold seeps as an energy source (just as plants use sunlight) to produce carbohydrates; they form the base of the food chain. Consumers are organisms that eat other organisms. All organisms in a food chain, except the first organism, are consumers.

The note beneath that - unlike the ones before it - had only been written a single time.

If science is your worst subject, does that mean you do better in math? There’s some crossover. But if it’s just the concepts, is it something about the idea of science that you think is so much harder than history or English? They’re all taught pretty much the same at this school.

For better or for worse.

[Joshua Bernstein]

I don't do very well in math either. History isn't hard though! But science just has so...so much. It's so much more complicated.

[Dr. Sean Neville]

The notes moved throughout the margins, continuing the discussion turned pep talk in whatever spare space that the writer could find. Fortunately, the writer possessed neat handwriting, allowing the script to fit into smaller spaces than someone with looser penmanship could.

Science is a method as much as it is a subject. It’s what lets us learn from our mistakes, and what lets us do everything, including history. History uses the same methods, even if they don’t call it that.

Besides, not everything in science is numbers.

Not that it meant much. With how this text book taught science, nobody could fault anyone for thinking otherwise.

[Joshua Bernstein]

Do you do tutoring? I can pay you.