Recently, at school, a friend of mine told me he didn't like chemistry. This wasn't all that surprising. I mean, different people like different things. Would would have guessed? But, since I'm a big fan of chemistry (I'm into the little things in life), I had to ask was there any justification for this, or is it just this innate distaste for the subject (which is completely fine).

He told me that he disliked chemistry as it was just theory, not founded in anything. He even went as far as to say chemistry shouldn't be taught in schools as we don't know if what we're teaching is trie. And I dislike this statement. For a few reasons.

1) Chemistry is founded upon evidence. We aren't Aristotle, you know. We had experiments to support our theories. It's not like we just decided that this sounds interesting, so we'll make it like that. For example, he said "How do you know there's a nucleus in an atom? We can't see it. There's no way to actually prove that it exists. Well, while we can't really prove anything (except in maths) we can put forward substantial evidence that there is a nucleus (See Rutherford experiment). To be fair to him, I had learnt this in Chemistry Year 11, which he was not apart of, for reasons that should be obvious.

2) A lot of people lack perspective. Perspective of anything. Think about it. We live for such a short amount of time. 70 years is a tiny fraction of the total lifespan of the Earth, much less the universe. That we can't see anything big nor small. We just can't comprehend it. It's crazy. And this lack of perspective really infuriates me. It causes many people to simply not understand things. I mean, how can you say there isn't any other forms of life on other planets? There are so many planets out there, that it's incredulous to say that there wouldn't be any life. The universe is so vast, yet many can't comprehend it. When my friend says how he can't see it, it doesn't mean it doesn't exist. It doesn't mean it can't be there.

3) Fine. I'll admit, some theories taught in Chemistry have imperfections. There are some flaws. I mean, look at metallic bonding. It can't explain a few thing. One example would be the almost random boiling points of metals. But it's a foundation for further understanding. It allows us for future progress of our understanding. Like before, remember Neils Bohr and his whole orbiting electrons? This was the model at the time. That an atom was like a miniature solar system. And guess what. He was wrong. But what he had learnt had helped us learn more about the atom. I mean, imagine trying to learn about the atom with no knowledge. It sounds impossible.

In summary, I think chemistry should be taught in schools. It's not a perfect, nor wholly accurate model by far, but it's the best we got, and we should teach that, in hopes that we get something better than what we got.

P.S: Don't think my friend is dumb (and I have to address the word theory as well, but I'll get into that in another entry). He is fairly bright boy. I mean, I think he'll have a lot to contribute to the scientific community.