Classroom Update from "Advanced Math & Science" with Marjorie Cantine and Steph Dick

This year, the two of us— Marjorie Cantine, a grad student in geochemistry at MIT, and Dr. Steph Dick, an assistant professor in the history of science at the University of Pennsylvania— combined forces to put together our class, “Advanced Math and Science.” Our course challenges students to explore the natural world through data and to examine science with a critical lens. 

Over the summer, our students engage with three labs. For each lab, students collect, analyze, and interpret data. We want our students to gain quantitative confidence and build analytical skills to serve them as citizens and potential future scientists. They practice creating and interpreting graphs, for example. This is a skill that feels very immediate now because statistics and graphs are constantly in the news both due to the COVID-19 pandemic and national protests against police violence.  For each lab, we also lead students through a set of critical questions about the limits of the data we are using, the assumptions on which our conclusions depend, and the entanglements of scientific inquiry with social and political context. We want students to recognize that science is not just a mechanical process that churns out answers, but rather an ongoing process that is human-driven, creative, dynamic, and social.

This week, our students learned about radioactivity from multiple perspectives. Tuesday’s class began with a scientific discussion of radioactivity and how it can be used— as in radiocarbon dating— to determine the ages of materials and to answer interesting scientific questions. Our lab on radioactivity had students flipping coins and recording their results to model the radioactive decay of uranium into lead. They are getting practice generating, plotting, and interpreting data at a college level.

Our students also put their social analysis to use by studying the impact of radioactivity in society. Radioactivity is not just a process of the natural world— it is a powerful force that humans have harnessed as a weapon of war. We opened class on Thursday with a discussion of the connection between science and society before launching into a lecture on the history of atomic weapons and their use against Japanese civilians at the end of World War II. Our students learned how most of our scientific data about the effects of radioactivity on the body come from the scientific study of Japanese atomic bomb survivors, called Hibakusha. Our students examined Hibakusha artwork; discussed the entanglement of scientific knowledge and violence in this historical case; and reflected on how data, seemingly so abstract, often comes from people. By the end of class, students expressed how their minds had changed over the course of the lecture. Their perceptions of science had changed from being an unquestioned positive force for improving society to seeing science as a force shaped by the values that society holds.

 It has been a pleasure to teach this course, which combines scientific know-how with historical context. Neither of us have gotten to teach a course like this, and we are so grateful to our students for engaging deeply with both quantitative and qualitative content. It takes special determination and focus to sign up for a summer class as a high schooler, and we feel that drive every day in our classroom. We cannot wait to go back to the Delta next summer and share the next iteration of our Freedom Summer Collegiate classes in person.