Newsgroups: sci.bio
Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!alchemy.chem.utoronto.ca!mroussel
From: mroussel@alchemy.chem.utoronto.ca (Marc Roussel)
Subject: Re: Quiz time
Message-ID: <1991Apr26.185708.19178@alchemy.chem.utoronto.ca>
Organization: Department of Chemistry, University of Toronto
References: <1991Apr24.134105.25827@pa.dec.com> <212@tdatirv.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 26 Apr 1991 18:57:08 GMT

I realize that other people have posted correct solutions, but I'm
hoping to start a meta-discussion, so please bear with me.  Also, I hope
Stanley doesn't view this as a personal attack.  It isn't meant to be.

In article <212@tdatirv.UUCP> sarima@tdatirv.UUCP (Stanley Friesen) writes:
>In article <1991Apr24.134105.25827@pa.dec.com> mikkelson@breakr.enet.dec.com
>(snopes) writes:
>> A "high-energy bond"
>>  a) absorbs a large amount of free energy when the phosphate group is
>>     attached during hydrolysis.
>>  b) is formed when ATP is hydrolyzed to ADP and one phosphate group
>>  c) is usually found in each glucose molecule; that is why glucose is
>>     chosen as the starting point for glycolysis.
>>  d) none of the above
>
>I choose (a).
>(b) is simply backwards, and (c) is essentially irrelevant, though
>I suppose a (weak) case might be made for (d) on the grounds that (a)
>is worded rather poorly.

It's a little worse than that.  Hydrolysis is the process in which a
chemical group is removed by the action of water.  (a) is therefore
nonsense.

> 
>>  a) reduced  b) oxidized  c) phosphorylated  d) denatured  e) none of these
>
>It is (a) reduced.
>Taking on hydrogen is the opposite of taking on oxygen.
>[I.e. it is energetically equivalent to *losing* oxygen].
>And since, in chemistry, the word for loss of oxygen is 'reduction',
>thus NADH is the reduced form of NAD.

This definition of reduction is bizarre to say the least.  Oxidation and
reduction have to do with electrons, not with oxygen.  

>>Which of the following has the most energy?
>>  a) AMP  b) ADP  c) ATP  d) glucose  e) NADPH

As someone else pointed out, this question is bizarre.  What kind of
energy are we talking here?  Free energy?  (Probably...)
     As I promised, I now wish to start a meta-discussion around this exam.
I have always thought of service courses as a mistake of monumental
proportions: the content is usually watered down and the emphasis is all
wrong.  I think that this exam is an ideal example of what happens to
students whose exposure to a subject comes via a service course: they
get a muddled view of the field.  Note that I'm not just talking about Stanley
(who probably gave more or less the answers the original instructor
expected), but about the instructor who set this exam.  I think it's clear
that he never got a proper grounding in chemistry from the questions he
asked.  Should this worry us?  I think so.  There's enough material to
learn in an undergraduate degree without forcing students to waste their
time on the drivel which usually winds us passing for a curriculum in
service courses.
     I speak partly from experience as an instructor in one particular
service course.  The problems as I see them are many and varied.  The
root problem however is class sizes.  Administrators like service
courses because they see it as appropriate for these to have very high
student to teacher ratios.  This makes it difficult to set a high
standard (because one is then forced to prepare fairly standard exams to avoid
spending all of one's time marking) and even more difficult to get the kind
of feedback one needs to decide how appropriate one's approach to a subject
is for the particular group being taught.  As a result of the generally
low standards in service courses, the large publishing houses seem to
have decreed that all textbooks intended for them shall be thoroughly
pablumized.  The whole experience seems to be designed to turn students off, no
matter how hard an individual instructor tries to find ways to reach
them.
     As if that weren't bad enough, try asking the target department
what they think should be in your course!  You'll get a list twenty miles
long.  Mind you they don't expect you to cover anything in any depth...
Just give the students "a general overview".  Needless to say, this is
no help at all.
     The question I must ask myself is "Should we bother?"  I can teach
my class about redox chemistry until I'm blue in the face, but if the
biology teacher expects them to "know" that oxidation has something to
do with oxygen, what am I to do?  (I don't mean this as an attack on
biologists.  The same is true of many chemists w.r.t physics, physicists
w.r.t. math, and so on.)
     I think about these questions a lot these days.  I have no solutions, but 
I'd love to hear from you if you have any ideas.  Should we do away
with service courses altogether or just think up new and more creative
ways to deliver them?  Should we replace them with frequent
extradepartmental guest lectures in mainstream courses?  I await your
opinions.

                                Sincerely,

				Marc R. Roussel
                                mroussel@alchemy.chem.utoronto.ca