During his lectures, he connects the world of inorganic chemistry with biology, art, geology, geography, and even the current political landscape. Above all, he teaches students to look at the world around them in a completely new way. In addition to inorganic chemistry, his main focus is on teaching experimental subjects (that is, how to properly conduct experiments in school) and creating teaching aids using 3D printing.
First of all, congratulations on the "Studentský Velemlok" award for chemistry in the academic year 2023/2024. You were awarded for Inorganic Chemistry III(b), could you please introduce this lecture to our readers?
Thank you. Yes, it is a lecture intended for fourth-year students, meaning the first year of master's studies, of the chemistry education major. The number three in the name of the lecture means that it is the third semester of inorganic chemistry that the students have. During bachelor studies, they have to go through two semesters of basic inorganic chemistry (I and II). These lectures are focused on basic knowledge about the elements, their compounds, and the basic principles of inorganic chemistry.
After that, the students come to me. My lecture is specialized for future teachers, as a pool of knowledge for them in their future teaching career. That means I don´t teach basic facts such as that sulphur is yellow. I try to include modern things, and how the elements are used in real life. It is nice to know that the melting point of tungsten is 3422 °C, but what is this good for?
This lecture aims to interlude inorganic chemistry and the rest of the world. We discuss everything, I try to show the students how everything is connected. We don´t talk only about the elements, we talk about how they are related to geography, geology, or politics. Sometimes we watch videos or listen to songs. It is a mashup of everything, but it all comes back to the elements, how they are used, and why textbooks are wrong. (laughter)
The important thing is that the future teachers, when they are going to teach, have something to base their classes on. I don´t want them to adhere simply to textbooks, as they are often outdated.
That sounds amazing. In the teaching-quality survey, students often mention that they like your innovative and original exams. Can you tell us what the exam looks like?
Have you ever been in an exam where you played cards with your teacher?
No, not ever.
See, and that is exactly what I do. However, we don´t play poker, of course. I created my own card game. Each card represents one element and its basic physical and chemical properties. Each one of us takes one card without the other knowing what is on it. You then chose on property where your element is better than mine. Then we look at the numbers. When you are right, you get both of the cards. Then we continue like this until you get enough cards. It can seem like a stupid game, but it shows general knowledge about the elements and the periodic table. For example, the melting points of the elements are in a certain range, and they follow a certain trend in the periodic table. If you choose atomic radius, for example, you have to know something about that. After the game, I want you to know something more about the elements that the students won.
I also have my favorite textbook. It's Dr. Karl Amerling's 1850's Archery Basic Economics and Craftsmanship. It's the first textbook written in Czech, and it's still partly written in Swabian. It dates from the time when the Czech chemical nomenclature was just emerging, but it was not yet in the form we know it today. So from that, students get some texts to translate into Czech, and what is going on there. And because there are more unfamiliar Old Czech words than the ones we know, the examinee has to have quite a grasp of chemistry.
I completely understand that this is very well received by the students. Is student feedback important to you in general? For example, will this year's award affect your teaching in future years?
Then again, I have some ideas on how to improve the teaching a little bit more. I also ask about what could be improved in the exam when we have time left at the end. Because there are things that I can't judge from my point of view, and students have good ideas. Now I even had a former student congratulate me on the velemlok, and she wasn't the only one who said that, taking information from my lecture into her teaching.
It is also a good sign that we keep in touch with our graduates. We occasionally meet here at various courses and events, such as Journey into the Depths of Chemistry Studies, and they reminisce about inorganics.
When I took over teaching inorganics about six years ago, I knew I wanted to do it differently, to take it in more of a practical direction.
In addition to Inorganic Chemistry III(b), you are also involved in teaching the Experiments in Chemistry course, and experiments are part of the Inorganic Chemistry lectures. You yourself also teach at the high school, you collaborate in the KSICHT correspondence seminar, and the Chemistry Olympiad, which is also to some extent experimentally oriented. Do you try to teach experimentally at the high school as well?
You see a used fire extinguisher over there, we sprayed that in chemistry yesterday in the sophomore year of high school. We were discussing dry ice, carbon dioxide, firefighting, and the students didn't believe that I was going to drop it right in the classroom. We put out the fire and made some more dry ice.
We follow the principle that Jan Amos Komenský came up with. When you're influencing students, you need to influence as many senses as possible at once, so smell it, smell it, smell it, touch it. If you take a piece of a tin plate, try to bend it, it will make sounds, an iron plate doesn't do that, and so on. Touch it, when you burn lime, it's hot. It's been tried and tested over many generations that if people can touch it or see it live, they remember it better.
There's a 3D printer running behind us, lots of printed teaching aids around. You teach 3D printing here at the college. What's the most original thing you've printed?
I like to use the printed periodic tables that we've come up with here. The advantage of the third dimension is that you can visualize trends of different physical properties of elements on the table. This is something that I have already printed several hundred copies of, and they are used to teach not only here at our faculty, but also in schools all over the country. Even abroad, we took them to Paris to the Sorbonne, and they liked them very much.
Outside of inorganics, I'm quite proud of this puzzle of how translation, transcription, and molecular biology in general work. It's the pieces that make up one strand of DNA, from which the other strand is synthesized to make them complementary. Then we make a replication from that, and how it works is that two molecules are created. And then from that, transcription and translation.
It's obvious that teaching is very close to your heart. What was your path to this field?
It all started when I was forbidden to do biology at home. Biology is the first thing you encounter in childhood because in primary school, science comes first, and chemistry doesn't start until sometime in seventh or eighth grade, depending on the school. And because both of our parents are chemists, we're very close to that science. So I started doing biology. But my parents didn't think it was a promising major, so they discouraged me from biology, and I started doing chemistry in about eighth or ninth grade. And then came Běstvina (the summer camp of the Chemistry Olympiad, ed.). Běstvina is a thing that grabs you and doesn't let go. This year I was there for the twenty-second time. I started to do chemistry there at a slightly higher level, and Honza Kotek caught me there. At that moment, I knew I was going to do inorganics. I don't even know why, it was just that the other disciplines weren't it, but the inorganics and the properties of the elements, that's what I was into from a young age. Then I worked in the laboratory of Honza Kotek at the bachelor's level, and I think the biggest part of my path to didactics was Honza Havlík and Professor Lukes. Professor Lukeš taught basic inorganics then, and just like today, there were experiments in those lectures. They were prepared by Honza Havlík, who also worked in our laboratory. And one year, he didn't have time to do the experiments, so he passed it on to me. And from then on, I did the experiments, not only for Professor Lukes, but also for others who needed them. And then I got caught up in didactics, but I never gave up on inorganics.
You spend most of your time teaching chemistry, whether at university or high school. Do you have a funny story from teaching that you could share with us?
Funny stories from teaching... like when students don't read the lab manuals. When it says, dispose of excess sodium in alcohol, they throw it in a tub of water, and then they're surprised that it makes them go up in flames.
Outside of that, we have advanced experiments, again, that's preparation for the teachers, where they can try whatever experiments they want if they report it to us in advance and we prepare for it. So when they come into the didactics lab, there's a black and tan ceiling. Right, because if you take a huge plastic bag full of methane and light it on fire, it burns all the way to the ceiling. But it's safe (laughs). We've done the experiment there repeatedly, and we haven't managed to destroy anything yet, even though, like, the fire alarm is all black and tan, but it's fine. And last week we shot nitrogen rockets, and we've managed to shoot over the whole faculty!
Thank you for the interview, and I wish you many successful experiments for your next class.
Magda Křelinová