Thermite

Well, this is a late post: got caught up in a box-set binge-watch loop of The Tourist... Anyway, onward...I was watching a couple of YouTube things earlier today which reminded me of how important good teaching is. The triteness of "those who can do, etc..." really needs no elaboration, it being born of the snobbery and elitism of the artist(e). The irony here is that teaching is an art, and like any art it is born of an indefinable and innate talent to communicate ideas via the conduit of knowledge, creativity and charisma. Knowledge and creativity are but the foundation stones, the keystone is the ability to make those foundations stick in the minds of those taught. One of the videos I was watching was from an old Royal Institution Lecture on explosives, and the lecturer held his young audience in thrall to the kind of stuff that we all grew up fascinated by: basically making things go bang!

I was minded of a particular teacher of mine from school: Mr. Rhodes, who taught me chemistry in the Fifth Form. He made the subject come alive by virtue of his personal love of his subject and his sense of the theatre of it. My fondest memory of him was his demonstration of the combustibility of aluminium (tragically, more recently demonstrated in the Grenfell Tower fire); conducted in the south playground shelter of school. A crucible held a mixture of powdered aluminium and iron oxide, and used strips of magnesium as the initiator. The magnesium was ignited with a blowtorch and seconds later, the most magnificent jet of pure white flame issued forth and scorched the roof of the shelter, leaving soot marks that remained until long after I left school a couple of years later.

This demonstration of the potential of thermite has remained one of my favourite memories of school to date: the knowledge of the chemistry of it staying with me long after the after-image of the flame itself faded: superb teaching by a superb teacher. We need to value people like him, not undermine them by managing them out of a job through overwork and under pay. We can't rely on the internet and AI for all of our knowledge: that would be just plain stupidity. Talk to people who know stuff and mean what they say: you know it makes sense.