Michael Lukie AlbertaScienceEducationJournalVol44No1August2015

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Vol 44, No 1
August 2015
a publication
of the
Science Council
of the
Alberta Teachers
Association
Vol 44, No 1
August 2015
Contents
2 Contributors
3 From the Editor
Wytze Brouwer
4 Elite German Chemists in World WarI
Michael Kohlman
12 The American Chemical Warfare Service in World WarI and its Aftermath
Michael Kohlman
25 Fostering Student Metacognition and Personal Epistemology in the Physics Classroom Through
the Pedagogical Use of Mnemonic Strategies
Michael Paul Lukie
32 Three-Eyed Seeing? Considering Indigenous Ecological Knowledge in Culturally Complex
Pedagogical Settings
Gregory Lowan-Trudeau
38 Geothermal Home Heating
Frank Weichman
43 Millsap and the Level of Civilization
Wytze Brouwer
45 Millsap and His- or Herland
Wytze Brouwer
Copyright 2015 by The Alberta Teachers Association (ATA), 11010 142 Street NW, Edmonton T5N 2R1. Unless otherwise indicated in
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ASEJ, Volume 44, Number 1, August 2015
Contributors
Wytze Brouwer, PhD, is a professor emeritus in the Faculty of Education, University of Alberta, Edmonton,
Alberta.
Michael Kohlman, MEd, is a doctoral student in the Department of Secondary Education at the University of
Alberta.
Greg Lowan-Trudeau, PhD, is an assistant professor of Indigenous Science Education in the Werklund School of Education, University of Calgary, Calgary, Alberta, and an adjunct professor in the Department of First Nations Studies
at the University of Northern British Columbia, Prince George, British Columbia.
Michael Paul Lukie, MEd, is a doctoral student in the Department of Secondary Education at the University of
Alberta.
Frank Weichman, PhD, is a professor emeritus in the Department of Physics, University of Alberta, with an interest
in renewables.
From the Editor

Wytze Brouwer
For a variety of reasons, mostly involving outdated computers, your editor has been slow in getting this issue
out to the public.
Michael Kohlman, in Elite German Chemists in World WarI, studies ways in which allegiance to national
goals often spurs scientists to great efforts to develop better and better weapons of destruction. It raises the
enduring question of how scientists can pretend to belong to the world as a whole, but then revert to narrow
nationalism during times of war.
Kohlman also looks at the American contribution to the development of chemical warfare in World WarI.
Michael Paul Lukie investigates the uses of mnemonic strategies in order to foster a deeper understanding of
physics and of problem solving. The author reports considerable success in using these strategies.
Gregory Lowan-Trudeau, in his article entitled Three-Eyed Seeing, explores the experiences of newcomers
to Canada in learning about Indigenous ecological knowledge in formal and informal settings. Two-eyed seeing
involves looking at the world simultaneously from both western and Indigenous perspectives. Three-eyed
seeing
Frank Weichman provides interested readers with an overview of geothermal home heating and its potential
in Alberta. In his usual way, DrWeichman includes a number of fairly simple calculations to help make sense of
the possibilities.
Wytze Brouwer introduces a pair of Bert Millsaps wilder flights of fancy in Millsap and the Level of Civilization and Millsap and His- or Herland.
Elite German Chemists in World WarI:

A Case Study in Nationalist-Imperialist Ardour1
Michael Kohlman

A man belongs to the world in times of peace, but to his

country in times of war.
Fritz Haber
more than any other innovation, it was the premiere

of poison gas in combat that caused witnesses and
historians to label this conflict the Chemists War.
Abstract
Science and the State
This article outlines the wartime contributions of three

elite German chemists and Nobel laureates: Fritz Haber,
Otto Hahn and Otto Warburg, and briefly discusses
their service to Imperial Germany (and briefly to its
successor states). These three scientists were selected
to represent the patriotism and nationalistic ardour of
many scientists, who were confronted by the greatest
international conflagration to occur up to that time.
World WarI demonstrated the primary importance and
deadly capabilities of modern science and technology
in war, and also the necessity of industrial innovation
and production capacity, with ruthless logic. But perhaps
As a long-time military buff and veteran chemistry

teacher, I find the topic of chemical weapons of considerable personal interest. The role(s) of elite chemists
in World War Ithe Chemists Waris unique neither to Germany nor to the Great War (Whittemore
1975; Russell 2001; Tucker 2006). This is just one case
study of the interplay of war and society with science
and technology, and a story of men at the highest levels
in their scientific field who heeded the urgent clarion
call to the service of their nation in a modern, total
war. (See also the article on the American Chemical
Warfare Service in WWI and its aftermath, on page12
of this publication.)
Pacifists have sometimes branded scientists participation in war or war industries as a betrayal of the more
noble and benevolent aspirations of sciencea sort of
nationalistic Faustian bargain with global consequences.
The controversy over Alfred Nobels creation of more deadly
and powerful explosives at the end of the 19thcentury
still leaves the Nobel Prizes with an indelible taint in
pacifists eyes, even more than a century later (Bown
2005, 17183). The stamp of stereotypical Prussian
militarism has sometimes been applied to Nobel laureates such as Fritz Haber, Otto Hahn or Emil Fischer, as
a pat explanation for complex personal motivations and
extraordinary cultural forces (Gispen 1991, 1569). In truth,
this paper could just as easily have focused on British
or American chemical warfare programs, or the patriotic
efforts of other scientists and engineers in the service
of God and Country, going back to Sir Francis Bacon.
Figure 1. Fritz Haber (pointing) directs his gas-pioneer

troops at a munitions dump and explains to regular army
observers, before an Imperial German Army attack with
chemical warheads.
ardor: 1a:an often restless or transitory warmth of feeling <the sudden ardors of youth> b:extreme vigor or energy: INTENSITY
c:ZEAL d:LOYALTY. synonym: PASSION (Merriam-Websters Online Dictionary [www.m-w.com/dictionary/ardor])
The flag-waving and nationalistic Sturm und Drang

that occur on all sides in a modern war pull even the
most elite scientists in their wake. Many people expected, even demanded, that scientists do their bit
in defending homeland, folk and their cherished way
of life, even as others reserved the right to express
revulsion and moral indignation when they were confronted with the grotesque aftermath of modern war.
That scientists did respond to the call, often with
tremendous ardour, should not come as a surprise.
Given the accomplishments of science and engineering
in building the wonders of the modern technological
world during peacetime, should anyone be shocked by
the resulting destructive efficiency of their wartime
efforts, when the full energy of fevered industrial
economies is harnessed to the service of the state?2
The role of German chemists in the Great War is
now overshadowed by the scientists (most notably
atomic physicists) of the gigantic AngloUS Manhattan
Project, or those (such as former gas pioneer Otto
Hahn) involved in Nazi Germanys more modest attempts to produce the first atomic weapons in World
WarII. However, the martial roles of the Kaisers chemists (Johnson 1990) are very well documented and still
of great interest to scholars as well as to amateur military and science history buffs. The public panic surrounding Saddam Husseins threatened chemical Scud
attacks in Gulf War1 and the exaggerated threat of
Iraqi nuclear, biological and chemical (NBC) warfare
capabilities that served as the pretext for Gulf War2
are testament to the publics continued phobia about
unconventional warfare (Tucker 2006).
Contrast this to the sometimes blas indifference
to prolonged foreign conventional conflicts (and modern guerrilla wars and insurgencies), which kill far more
people every year than the chemical weapons of WWI.
An envelope containing imagined anthrax spores, or
the postulated dirty-bomb-in-a-briefcase prompts more
media coverage and domestic hypersensitivity than
thousands dying by attrition in faraway wars, even those
involving our boys. This is merely the latest version
of the same irrational fear that disproportionately decried attacks by chemical weapons that killed thousands
in the Great War, while tolerating death tolls running
into the millions from bullets, shells and bombs, which
nonetheless rely equally on modern chemistry for their

action (Bown 2005, 225). Was dying by exposure to
chlorine, phosgene, mustard or lewisite (see separate
article on American CWS in WWI) any more horrible
than the slow, agonizing death of the mortally wounded
in the hellish mud of Passchendaele or the Somme?
German industrial chemist and Nobel laureate Fritz Haber
had this to say on the subject (see Figure1 on page4):
Every war is a war against the soul of the soldier,
not against his body. New weapons break his morale
because they are something new, something he has
not yet experienced, and therefore something that
he fears. We were used to shell-fire. The artillery
did not do much harm to morale, but the smell of
gas upset everybody. (Goran 1967, 69)
Entire books and extensive journal articles have
been written on the introduction of chemical warfare
and other science-dependent innovations and war
industries in WWI. I intend to use Fritz Haber, Otto
Hahn and Otto Warburg as the poster-chemists for this
article, with just brief mention of others. It is by no means
a complete cast, but hopefully still representative.
Even an adequate mention of all German Nobel
laureates involved in the war effort during 191418,
not to mention other prominent scientists, would require much more space than this article allows. Generally, one can place these men into one (or more) of
three general categories:
1. Those that entered active military service (for instance, OHahn, GHertz, OWarburg)
2. Those that directed critical war industries and/or
coordinated efforts between scientific, industrial,
military and state institutions (EFischer, WOstwald,
CDuisberg et al)
3. Those that developed and/or improved chemical
weapons or delivery systems, and/or protective
countermeasures (for example, WNernstweapons, RWillstttergas masks)
Some, including Haber and Hahn, actually performed
all of these roles at one time or another. Contrast this
to the rather sympathetic policies by which American
science students and working scientists were exempted
from service in WWII or, especially, the Vietnam conflict. One can argue that this is a rational consequence
2
See Cornwell (2003) for a thorough exposition of the Nazi and Anglo-American atomic fission research and development programs
before and during WWII, and the role of German chemists and biologists in WWII. Cornwell also has chapters on Fritz Haber and the
Poison Gas Scientists as their WWI predecessors.
of the higher priority given to science and science education after WWI. Nonetheless, one has to admire the
spirit and moxy of Fritz Haber, Otto Hahn or Otto
Warburg, who voluntarily abandoned such prestigious
and promising scientific careers for the privations and
uncertainties of military service in the trenches and
battlefields of WWI.
Fritz Haber: They Sow the Wind, and

Reap the Whirlwind (Hosea 8:7)
Indeed, in the example of Herr Geheimrat3 DrFritz
Haber (18681934), we have an almost perfect case
study of the Jekyll and Hyde of science and technology
in modern society, a brilliant morning star turned fallen
angel, doomed to suffer the consequent slings and
arrows of his chauvinistic patriotism in a true-life tragedy worthy of Faust, Othello or Hamlet. Habers love
of poetry and the classics, his legend as a great teacher
and advocate of science and technology, and the enormous ongoing humanitarian benefits of synthetic fertilizer that now allows billions of people to survive stand
in stark counterpoint to the poisonous cloud (Haber
1986) of many thousands killed by the chemical warfare
that he helped pioneer, or the millions of his Jewish
brethren who would later perish in Nazi gas chambers
flooded by Zyclon B (Cornwell 2003). Habers idol,
Goethe, could hardly have had a better model for
DrFaustus (Goran 1967, 5).
When war broke out in 1914, Habers process for
the synthetic production of ammonia was already in
the initial stages of full-scale industrial production,
under the leadership of chemical engineer Carl Bosch
(Charles 2005; Johnson 1990). From an initial production of 36,000 tons in 1913, ammonia production grew
rapidly in volume and relative importance, reaching over
200,000 tons by 1917, churned out by gigantic chemical plants eventually consolidated under the banner of
IGFarben (Cornwell 2003, 5254). This contribution
alone allowed Germany to fight a long, resource-intensive
industrial war, long after traditional sources of nitrogen
for explosives, fertilizers and so forth had dried up due
to the strangling effects of the British naval blockade.
It could easily be argued that but for the Haber-Bosch

process, and Habers (et al) efforts to increase production capacity, Germany would have been forced to
capitulate, perhaps as early as 1915 (Bown 2005,4).4
In hindsight, that would have been a merciful blessing,
for all sides. But that was not to be Habers best-known
contribution to the war effort.
After the war erupted, Haber and many other German
scientists, university students and even tenured professors were either called up to active service or volunteered
in a wave of patriotic fervour. When Habers offer of military service was first refused, he became severely depressed for several weeks, and not for the first or last time
(Charles 2005). Soon, however, his Kaiser Wilhelm Institute
(KWI) for Physical Chemistry and other critical research
facilities were enlisted to aid the war effort, along with
those of Emil Fischer, Carl Duisberg, Walther Nernst et
al, in the Prussian War Ministrys newly organized War
Raw Materials Department, under the leadership of
Walther Rathenau (Johnson 1990; see chapter8, Military Strength and Science Come Together). The scientists were often appalled and frequently frustrated by
the bureaucratic and military leaders scientific/technical
ignorance and lack of planning and foresight, in stark
contrast to the old stereotype of Teutonic efficiency. In
addition to developing viable synthetic versions of militarily critical raw materials (ammonia, nitric acid, toluol,
gasoline, oil, rubber and so on), these men were also
key in developing substitutes for essential products in
short supply. Thus the German Ersatz program was born
(Johnson 1990, 188). The Haber-Bosch process was a
vital industrial model for many of these attempts.
In 1915, Habers Berlin-Dahlem KWI for physical
chemistry became a centre for research and development
of tactical military science and technology. Johnson
(1990) explains the motivations for this program:
The bankrupt Schlieffen Plan catapulted the German
High Command into a situation on the Western
front without any precedent in their military traditions. With their lines thinly held and reserves of
munitions used up, they confronted an unbroken
line of trenches against which conventional weapons often failed completely.
3
Geheimrat was the title of the highest officials of a German royal or principal court, equivalent to an English privy councillor. It was also
applied to heads of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institutes (KWI) even after WWI, as an honorific (also Excellenz).
4
The Versailles Treaty required Germany to disclose the secret technical details of the Haber-Bosch process, such as the preparation of
the catalyst, that had so far eluded Allied chemists attempts to replicate it. This marked the first time an industrial processs secrets
were included as part of a peace treaty (Bown 2005, 231). Bown documents the fascinating story of the intersection of nitrates with
geopolitics, war and industrial power.
Innovation in weaponry arose not simply from the

unforeseen tactical problems of trench warfare, but
also from the crisis in strategic raw materials that
produced the Ersatz program. Thus the new chemical weapons were to be Ersatz themselves a
substitute for conventional munitions. Recognizing
this, the generals swallowed their pride and turned
to the scientists whose offers of help they had
earlier spurned. (p189)
Haber was not the first scientist to be directed

towards chemical weapon development. Duisberg and
Nernst had tried various nonlethal irritants in grenades,
shrapnel shells and bombs, in order to skirt sections
of the Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907. Haber was
the first to devise a simple but effective scheme. The
attack at Ypres, employing some 5,500 massed chlorine
cylinders, earned Haber the title of Father of Gas
Warfare, for better and for much worse (Johnson 1990,
190). Haber started his military service with a rank of
reserve-sergeant, but was then selected to head the
section of the War Ministry dealing with all aspects of
gas warfare, and eventually commanded a staff that at
wars end reached 1,500. The moderate but underwhelming success of the first chlorine gas attacks (Operation
Disinfection) near Ypres, Belgium, in AprilMay 1915,
is described by Trumpener (1975, 46080). The Kaiser
honoured Haber by making him a captain, an unprecedented rank for one of his Jewish heritage. His American
and British counterparts were made generals (Brophy
1956), although Haber is alleged to have pulled that
rank (or even higher civilian titles) in order to impress
uncooperative or nonchalant military/bureaucratic
functionaries who questioned his authority.
Haber alternately relished his military service and
accolades (including both classes of the Iron Cross, and
other decorations) and despised the pomp and the
rigid military methodologies and hierarchies. In asking
his friend and fellow KWI Geheimrat Richard Willstatter
for his help in developing an effective gas mask design,
he joked I am a sergeant. I command you to the task
(Goran 1967, 76). On another occasion he told a captain
attached to his staff, who had the strange habit of always wearing his riding-spurs in the office, to jump
on your horse and ride into the next room for the
documents (Goran 1967, 77). Haber was furious that
the potential breakthrough at Ypres was squandered
due to lack of available reserves to exploit the premiere
of modern chemical warfare (Tucker 2006, 16). As Haber
had predicted, subsequent attempts lacked the same
shock value and were soon countered with a host of
defensive measures.
Despite his hectic schedule, including his presence
at multiple battlefronts, direction of programs at the
highest levels, and a progression to more and more lethal
chemicals, Haber never achieved the decisive strategic
breakthrough and war-winning results he had dreamed
of. One tactical success involving a chemical attack that
is not often mentioned was the late 1917 Austro-German
offensive near Caporetto, Italy, which earned thenCaptain Erwin Rommel his Pour le Mrite and produced
a much-celebrated victory over the surprised Italians in
their previously impregnable mountain fortresses along
the wickedly rugged Isonzo Front (Hahn 1970, 127).
It is estimated that total fatalities due to gas operations by the wars end neared 100,000. The normal
death rate for gas casualties was less than half that for
conventional weapons, and also paled in comparison
to deaths by disease, exposure and even friendly fire
(Haber 1986; Tucker 2006).5 Also, compared to gas
fatalities, many more German soldiers and civilians
died of disease and malnutrition in the closing phase
of the war as a result of the Allied blockade, but no
Allied naval commanders or politicians were branded
as war criminals. Like many of his colleagues, Haber
was eventually worn down by the gruelling wartime
conditions, punishing schedule and war-weariness, and
he became deeply despondent upon Germanys precipitous decline and collapse in 1918. Not even the
Nobel Prize for Chemistry was enough to ease his woes,
and widespread condemnation of his war efforts
tarnished his otherwise sterling reputation in the international scientific community, even after his sad
death in exile in 1934 (Charles 2005).6
Clara Habers suicide in 1915, as well as that of his
eldest son, his postwar fall from grace and his death
in exile after the Nazis rose to power will forever mark
There is a large discrepancy in casualty statistics for gas warfare in WWI, and even for conventional weapons vs other causes of death
(disease, death due to exposure after being wounded and so forth), but the sources used here are more accurate than some of the original statistics from more partisan sources.
5
Haber received his award, alone, in June 1920, six months after the official ceremony; he was the first Nobel recipient not to be personally presented the award by the King of Sweden (Bown 2005, 1).
6
Habers story as one of the most tragic and ironic cases

in the history of science (Charles 2005, 16569).7 There
are many intriguing parallels and contrasts to the example of Haber with other contemporary and more
recent scientists that make Fritz Haber especially
worthy of detailed study. This list includes Habers WWI
gas-pioneer subordinate Otto Hahn, their fellow German chemists and physicists of World WarII fame, Nazi
exiles and refugees (Leo Szilard and Albert Einstein,
among others), and even the American physicist JRobert Oppenheimer (190467), of Manhattan Project fame
(see Cornwell [2003] for an explicit comparison).
Otto Hahn: My LifeMy Country,

Right or Wrong
This segue brings us to Otto Hahn (18791968). In
addition to his remarkable involvement in the Great
War, he later became one of the leading German scientists exploring nuclear fission for its potential applications in energy production and use as a weapon
(Hahn 1970). If any single German scientist sparked the
fear on the part of the Allies that led to the Manhattan
Project, it was Hahn. Hahn earned his doctor of philosophy in organic chemistry at Marburg in 1901, and
that same summer began his year of customary military
service. He could have been exempted, but instead
volunteered and was placed with Infantry Regiment
No1 at Frankfurt, following in the footsteps of his two
older brothers (Hahn 1970, 58). He completed his year
as an acting sergeant-major but, despite passing the
reserve officer exam, he declined the offer in favour of
an assistants position at Marburg in the lab of his
former professor. In postdoctorate forays to England
with Sir William Ramsay (Nobel laureate for discovery
of several noble gases) and McGill, in Montreal, with
Sir Ernest Rutherford (Nobel Prize for his nuclear theory
of the atom), Hahns career path switched to the study
of radioactive isotopes, still in the pioneer stage. After
returning to Germany he landed in Berlin, under
eheimrat Emil Fischer (Nobel Prize for the chemistry

G
of sugars), who headed the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute
for organic chemistry.
Here Hahn began his long and fruitful collaboration
with Austrian-Jewish physicist Lise Meitner, which
eventually led to the Nobel Prize for the study of trans
uranium decay and the development of the theory of
nuclear fission. In Berlin, Hahn also met Fritz Haber,
who later quite possibly prevented his becoming just
another scientist-turned-soldier killed in the massive
infantry battles at the front. Hahn was spared the cruel
fate of many other young science students, academics
and working scientists, as the call to arms went out to
many who had thought their bygone year of obligatory
service in peacetime would be just an innocent and
temporary flirtation with military life (Hahn 1970, 112).
After being called up to active service in a Landwehr
regiment in the summer of 1914, deputy-officer Hahn
was moved to the Western front, to participate in the
great wheel through Belgium of the Schlieffen plan. He
did not experience front-line combat until going into
the line at Ypres that fall, as the opposing sides transitioned from a war of movement to the bloody stalemate of trench warfare. Hahn managed to win an Iron
Cross, Second Class, for manning some captured Belgian machine-guns, in order to repulse a British attack.
He remained in Flanders until January 1915, when he
received an official summons to report to Haber in
Brussels (Hahn 1970, 11416). Hahn reluctantly joined
Habers team of scientist-warriors, along with James
Frank, Gustav Hertz and others. Franck and Hertz
won the 1925 Nobel Prize in Physics for their prewar
experiments of 191214, an important confirmation
of the Bohr model of the atom (Nachmansohn 1979, 63).8
After training with a newly created Giftgassonder
kommando (a unit of engineer specialists, for poison gas
attacks), Hahn went back to the Ypres sector to help in
the deployment of the chlorine cylinders for the fateful
attack that officially launched the era of chemical warfare in the popular conception (Trumpener 1975).9
7
Clara Haber (his first wife, and a PhD in chemistry herself) shot herself with her husbands service revolver after a bitter argument over
his role in the gas attack at Ypres. Haber had just left for the Russian front that morning, and the news came as a dreadful shock when it
arrived days later (Tucker 2006, 16).
8
Frank and Hertz won for their work on quantization of energy in the transformation from kinetic energy to light, as first postulated by
Max Planck, and which they demonstrated more convincingly than Einstein.
9
It is interesting to note that lance-corporal Adolf Hitler was a mustard-gas casualty near Ypres, in mid-October 1918. One night while
couriering messages, he was caught for several hours in a long artillery barrage, but staggered to his destination and delivered his last
message at dawn before becoming temporarily blind. He ended the war in hospital convalescing; he recounted the traumatic experience
in Mein Kampf. This may help explain the German nonuse of chemical weapons in combat during WWII, despite extensive stockpiles of a
new generation of chemical weapons, including the new nerve gases, like tabun and sarin (Tucker 2006, 1820).
He was already away in the Champagne sector, scouting

for locations for future gas attacks, when the repeatedly delayed attack was finally launched. In May of 1915
Hahn witnessed attacks on Russian positions in the east,
in which phosgene was first mixed with chlorine in
artillery shells, and he observed first-hand the devastating results on the unprotected Russian conscripts. Hahn
was also involved in developing the chemical formulations and designing systems for filling the chemical
artillery shells. He had several brushes with death or
blindness from minor accidents with these ghastly mix
tures, despite their rather innocuous-sounding names,
like green-cross, blue-cross and motley-cross, taken
from the colour-coded markings on the shell casings
that denoted their deadly contents (Hahn 1970, 118).
At the end of 1916, Hahn was transferred to headquarters in Berlin as a staff officer (he was the lone
chemist of the group) under Colonel (later General)
Peterson, as a first lieutenant (Hahn 1970, 12023).
Despite his new position, Hahn was still involved in
dangerous experiments, even personally testing Willsttters new gas-mask design containing a synthetic
rubber additive (hexamethyl tetramine) that would
resist the corrosive effects of even the very nasty Buntkreuz (motley-cross). 10 Containing both phosgene
(COCl2) and diphenylchloroarsine, this mixture was
designed to eat through conventional rubber masks

and either cause painful burns or force the victim to
remove the mask and thus breathe the deadly vapours.
In hindsight, it is incredible that such a valuable scientist and expert would be exposed to such risks, but
many of his gas-pioneer comrades suffered grievous
injuries or death in similar circumstances. Hahn spent
time at various fronts through the summer and fall of
1918, and ended the war in Wilhemshaven and Danzig,
as the Red sailor rebellions swept portions of the Imperial Navy and the final collapse of Imperial Germany
occurred (Hahn 1970, 125129). See Figure2 below.
After WWII, Hahn was a vital national resource for
the rebuilding of West German science, and eventually
became the head of the Kaiser Wilhelm Society, later
renamed in honour of Nobel physicist Max Planck (Hahn
1970). His postwar exploits were considerably happier
and more successful than those of Haber, but he was
also to feel the sting of accusation and recrimination
for his scientific work under Nazi rule, and controversy
dogged his relations with the international scientific
community, even after his death in 1968. For a time,
there was a new synthetic element named in Hahns
honour (hahniumelement105), which was proposed
after his death by a group from Berkeley under fellow
Nobel laureate Glenn Seaborg. However, in 1997, IUPAC
Figure 2. Hahn (on back of truck with guitar) off to war in 1914 in the infantry, and at right in the trenches near Ypres in
1918 as a gas-pioneer officer (note the gas mask that he helped test on his chest).
Richard Willsttter received the Iron Cross for his new gas-mask design (Nachmansohn 1979, 206) and the 1915 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his research on the structure of chlorophyll pigments.
10
(the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry)

officially changed the name of element105 to dubnium,
after a long-running political battle with a Soviet/Russian group claiming they had produced it first (Rothstein 1995, 56). Just as military battles leave casualties
in their wake, battles in the politics of science also
leave scars, and many American texts and periodic
tables persisted in retaining hahnium.11
Otto Hahn also serves as an important link between
the pre-eminent Imperial German science (chemistry)
of the Great War (Johnson 1990) and what became the
new Holy Grailatomic physicsin World War II. Like
Haber, who won the first post-WWI Nobel Prize in
Chemistry for a discovery made just before the war
and which was to affect its outcome, Hahn was to
receive his award amid controversy and public outcry
(Bown 2005). In November 1945, the Swedish Academy
awarded Otto Hahn the 1944 Nobel Prize in Chemistry
for his discovery of the fission of heavy atomic nuclei.
Like Haber, he did not attend the official ceremony;
instead, King GustavV of Sweden finally made the
presentation to Otto Hahn privately in December
1946.
Before concluding, we have perhaps the most hopeful example of all three principle characters here, and
one who earned his Nobel Prize in a category other
than chemistry. He had no direct personal direct involvement with gas warfare, but avoided a soldiers
death in the 1918 Michael offensive, in which German
casualties climbed precipitously, through the timely
intervention of perhaps the most famous German
scientist of all (Kohlman 2013).
Otto Warburg: Rejoice, For my son

was dead and is alive again; he was
lost, and is now found (Luke15:2324)
The final Nobel laureate to be profiled in this article
is Otto Warburg (18831970). A trained chemist and
acknowledged pioneer in the field of biochemistry,
Warburg eventually won the 1931 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his work in understanding cellular respiration and the role of oxidative enzymes, as
well as being a pioneer of early cancer research (Nachmansohn 1979, 23337). Warburg was working in
Berlin under Walther Nernst in 1914, but he joined an
Uhlan (light cavalry) regiment and served with distinction on the Western front, rising to first lieutenant,
and was decorated with the Iron Cross, First Class. In
March 1918, he received a letter from none other than
Albert Einstein, begging him to give up active service
in the military in order to preserve his life and brilliant
promise in science. Einsteins letter persuaded Warburg
to return to Berlin, where he began working at the
Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Biology. Warburg got his
own department after the war, and by 1931 headed
the KWI for Cell Physiology, built with a special grant
from the Rockefeller Foundation.
Hitler came to power a year later, and yet, despite
his Jewish heritage, Warburg continued to head the
KWI for Cell Physiology throughout the war. Friends
with high-level Nazi connections even induced Reichsmarschall Hermann Gring to downgrade Warburgs
racial status to one-quarter Jewish (Nachmansohn
1979, 238). This, and Hitlers alleged phobia of cancer,
apparently allowed Warburg to survive the Nazi pogroms that purged Jewish academics in universities,
institutions and other key science positions and attempted to eradicate the ideological menace of
Jewish-Science, which claimed such luminaries as
Einstein and Haber (Cornwell 2003, 10341). This is all
the more miraculous considering Warburgs repeated
bold statements critical of the Nazi regime, which required the timely intervention of a Reichsleiter in Hitlers
Chancellery to protect him (Nachmansohn 1979, 254).
Otto Warburg worked actively in his laboratory right
up to his death at the age of87, having been granted
a special waiver from mandatory retirement by the Max
Planck Society, the postWWII successor to the Kaiser
Wilhelm Institutes of Imperial days.
Conclusion
This cursory case study of elite German scientists
has intended to highlight their wartime involvement
at the apex of Imperial German scientific academia and
technological power. One cannot help but be humbled
by their brilliance, dedication and extraordinary life
experiences. Their legacy in science and society since
their tenure as the Kaisers chemists is still remarkable, a full century after the outbreak of the Great War.
Chemists and physicists will find it interesting that element109meitnerium, named after Hahns once-snubbed Jewish BerlinDahlem colleaguesurvived intact the AmericanRussian cold war of naming synthetic elements.
11
10
That there are so many others who perished in that

great cataclysm that was supposed to end all wars is
but one great shame of that conflict. That others continued to die in wars, armed insurrections and revolutions fuelled by ever more deadly Nobel-inspired
military technology and the willing perversion of sciences noble aspirations is perhaps the ultimate crime
of the 20thcentury. That the oft-repeated mistakes of
this dark past continue to threaten humanity in the
new millennium also raises the fundamental question
as to whether humanity can ever really learn from the
past, or instead be doomed to repeat it ad infinitum,
until our ability and willingness to destroy ourselves
utterly is finally realized in one last inglorious burst of
deadly earnestness and brilliant innovention.
This article began with a quote from German-Jewish
chemist Fritz Haber. It closes with a picture taken at
the Trinity test site after the detonation of the first
atomic bomb (see Figure3) and a quote from AmericanJewish physicist JRobert Oppenheimer. The quote was
taken from the Bhagavad Gita, but slightly changed.
What it leaves out is at least as interesting. It is impossible to state how the course of history might have
been altered if Fritz Haber and Robert Oppenheimer
(and their many colleagues) had taken these scriptures
to heart. It is fortunate we survivors still have the
chance to imagine, and thereby avoid, the fulfillment
of those ancient scriptures. Let us Imagine how we
might each contribute to an alternate destiny.12
References
Bown, S. 2005. A Most Damnable Invention: Dynamite, Nitrates,
and the Making of the Modern World. Toronto: Penguin.
Brophy, LP. 1956. Origins of the Chemical Corps. Military
Affairs 20, no4: 21726.
Charles, D. 2005. Master Mind: The Rise and Fall of Fritz Haber.
New York: HarperCollins.
Cornwell, J. 2003. Hitlers Scientists: Science, War, and the Devils
Pact. New York: Penguin.
Gispen, K. 1991. Review of The Kaisers Chemists: Science and
Modernization in Imperial Germany by JeffreyA Johnson.
American Historical Review 96, no5: 1569.
Goran, M. 1967. The Story of Fritz Haber. Norman, Okla:
University of Oklahoma Press.
Haber, LF. 1986. The Poisonous Cloud: Chemical Warfare in the
First World War. New York: Oxford University Press.
Hahn, O. 1970. My Life. London: MacDonald.
Johnson, JA. 1990. The Kaisers Chemists: Science and Modernization
in Imperial Germany. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North
Carolina Press.
Kohlman, M. 2013. The Influence of Imperial German Science,
Education and Research on America and Britain, 18711941.
Alberta Science Education Journal 43, no1: 2633.
Nachmansohn, D. 1979. German-Jewish Pioneers in Science:
19001933. New York: Springer-Verlag.
Figure 3. Is a picture worth a thousand verses?
Rothstein, L. 1995. The Transfermium Wars. Bulletin of the

Atomic Scientists 51, no1: 56.
Now I am become Deaththe destroyer of worlds.

J Robert Oppenheimer
Russell, EP. 2001. War and Nature: Fighting Humans and Insects
with Chemicals from World WarI to Silent Spring. New York:
Cambridge University Press.
Oppenheimers famous quote refers to the following

passage from the Bhagavad Gita, chapter 11, verse 32:
The Blessed Lord said:
Time I am, destroyer of the worlds,
And I have come to engage all people.
With the exception of you,
All the soldiers here on both sides will be slain.
12
Trumpener, U. 1975. The Road to Ypres: The Beginnings of

Gas Warfare in World WarI. Journal of Modern History 47,
no3: 46080.
Tucker, JB. 2006. War of Nerves: Chemical Warfare from World
WarI to Al-Qaeda. New York: Pantheon.
Whittemore, GF. 1975. World WarI, Poison Gas Research, and
the Ideals of American Chemists. Social Studies of Science5,
no2: 13563.
A shameless reference to the John Lennon song of the same name.
11
The American Chemical Warfare Service in

World WarI and Its Aftermath: Brewing an
End to War and Ensuring a Prosperous
Peace for Science and Industry
Michael Kohlman
Abstract
This article explores the wartime development and
postwar legacy of the American Chemical Warfare
Service (CWS) as an important developmental prototype on the long road to Big Science and Total War, as
well as a first stirring of an American militaryindustrial
complex, decades before the more publicized rise to
prominence of physics and engineering in WWII and
the early Cold War. The Chemists War had an enormous impact on America's nascent science, technology
and industry, as well as spurring science education. It
also deeply affected the publics perception of war,
chemistry, and government-directed science and technology for military purposes. Ultimately, the p
oison
gases used in wartime began to be exploited for commercial applications as pesticides, agricultural poisons
and other toxins whose long-term health and environmental consequences exceeded their predecessors
direct effects in combat.
Introduction
The phenomenon of chemical warfare is most
closely linked to the horrific stalemate of trench warfare on the Western Front of World WarI, even though
there have been several notorious episodes in more
recent conflicts.1 This history has been extensively
explored and documented, including a personal foray
1
The ongoing civil war in Syria has again thrust chemical weapons into the news and the publics consciousness, but the most deadly
modern example is their use by the forces of Saddam Hussein in both the IranIraq War and subsequent controversial use against the
Kurd minority in northern Iraq in 1988 (Christianson 2010, 10915). For a detailed expos of the genesis of chemical weapons in combat
see Trumpener (1975).
12
into the experience of several elite German chemists

as impromptu chemical warriors (see Elite German
Chemists in World WarI, pp411). In this article, I
will explore the development and postwar legacy of
the American Chemical Warfare Service (CWS) as an
important developmental prototype on the long road
to Big Science and Total War, as well as a first stirring
of an American military-industrial complex several
decades before the more publicized instauration of
physics and military engineering in WWII and the Cold
War. The Chemists War had an enormous impact on
Americas nascent science, technology and industry
and deeply affected the domestic publics perception
of war, chemistry, and government-directed science
and technology for military purposes (Kohlman 2013).
In just two short years, American chemists, army officers, bureaucrats and industrialists created the
worlds largest gas-warfare combat service, the largest
stockpile of chemical weapons, their own poison gas
(lewisite) and, more important, the largest American
government-sponsored scientific research and development organization to that time (Brophy 1959; Vilensky
2005).
Many of the founding fathers of the Chemical Warfare Service became ardent converts to and fervent
evangelists for the cause of chemical weapons and the
vital role of scientists and industry in waging a modern
war or maintaining a fragile peace. In the public furor
over chemical warfare, poison-gas advocates were vilified and pilloried for their uncivilized views. This
opposition was largely due to the very effective propaganda campaign the Allies had waged against The
Huns indiscriminate use of barbaric weapons of mass
destruction that violated established military codes of
chivalry and decency. Despite fierce public and regulararmy opposition, the inspired efforts of these chemical
warfare advocates were eventually rewarded with the
permanent establishment of the Chemical Warfare
Service as a separate branch of the army, later to be
expanded to corps strength (Brophy 1959). Their tireless campaign also resulted in enhanced government
support for chemistry education and for chemical research, development and commercial applications of
deadly chemicals (Russell 2001). The American experience with chemical weapons cum commercial products
also serves as a foreshadowing of the Cold War-era
promotion of the peaceful uses of nuclear weapons
in what became known as Project Plowshare, sponsored
by the Atomic Energy Commission (Kohlman 2012).
I argue that this prior historical episode was a first

stirring of what eventually became known as the American militaryindustrial complex and a prequel to socalled Big Science and Technology mobilized for Total
War. In addition, the rapid growth of the CWS served
as a template for later crash programs in World WarII
that would in turn form the conceptual mold for Cold
War-era science and technology. In a world with thousands of thermonuclear weapons and the more recent
bogeyman of biological agents as terror devices, poison
gases have lost much of their fear factor and shock
value, but they continue to be manufactured and stockpiled in secret military arsenals around the world and
remain a viable terror weapon for smaller players on
the world stage (Tucker 2006, 36786).
America Adjusts to War

Over There
Even before Americas direct entry into the Great
European War, there were dramatic impacts upon
Americas chemical industries and all those reliant on
its numerous products. Severe shortages and supply
disruptions occurred as a result of the imposed blockade of Germany and the increased demand from
Americas allies for both essential raw materials and
strategic chemicals. American chemistry, science and
trade journals chronicled the grave challenges, savvy
innovation and prodigious efforts to replace prewar
sources and imports with domestic production and
alternatives. One account, from a December 1915
speech (Withrow 1916) by the president of the Chemistry Section of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), applauds and briefly
profiles the great strides the chemical industry had
made since conflict erupted in far-off Europe in autumn
1914, in a Science article entitled The American Chemist and the Wars Problems:
On every hand we see chemical activity without
end. Products like synthetic phenol and barium salts
not made in this country before the war are now
made in large amount. Great expansion in production has taken place in the case of such material as
benzol, toluol, aniline products, naphthalene, carbon-tetra-chloride, acids, alkalis, chlorates, chromates and even oxalic acid. With all of these we
were largely or in part dependent on imports, but
have almost ceased to be so since the war began.
13
Fertilizer plants erect their own sulfuric-acid works

and insecticide makers their own arsenic-acid
plants. Textile mills make their own bleach. Numbers of manufacturers replace potash compounds
by sodium compounds and, to my own surprise at
least, often with great improvement in results.
Where formerly was the most peaceful of occupations, even fertilizer manufacture, every effort now
goes to the making of munitions. New plants spring
up at the beck and call of the new conditions such
as the world has never seen. Think of a battery of
one hundred nitric-acid stills each charging 4,000
lbs. of sodium nitrate three times a day. Think of
the fact that this one of a number of such (the largest nitric acid plant in the world, it is said) plants
which a year ago did not exist except in the minds
and plans of a group of chemical engineers. How
little are we able to comprehend the reality of
producing 1,000,000 pounds per day of gun-cotton
where a year ago was merely pine-woods. (p837)
Already the world leader in steel production, petroleum refining, automobile manufacture and a host
of other industrial benchmarks (Bland 1977), America
expanded its output of hundreds of chemicals, commodities and manufactured products necessary to
prosecute war on an industrial scale. Even without the
production of chemical weapons, the transformation
of chemistry and related applied industries in the
United States would have been remarkable. As the
Arsenal of Democracy, Americas status as a great
power was cemented in the minds of its European allies
and its future enemies. As the British Munitions Board
chair declared in 1916, The DuPont company is entitled to the credit of saving the British Army (Russell
2001, 30).
American chemists asserted the primacy of their
contribution to the war, and their leaders urged military
and political leaders to utilize chemists and engineers
wisely. They highlighted the initial mistakes the European powers made in sending vital scientific talent,
skilled engineers or technical experts to the front as
cannon fodder, only to be later urgently recalled to the
industrial home front. As AAAS Chemistry Section chief
Withrow (1916) put the issue,
[T]he present war is a struggle between the industrial chemical and engineering genius of the Central
Powers and that of the rest of the world. Quite irrespective of the wars origins, aims, ideals or political
14
circumstances these are the cohorts from which

each side derives its power. (p840)
In order to deal with the inevitable supply and
manpower shortages and bottlenecks, American leaders sought to rationalize and more efficiently direct
the vital industries, scientific and engineering experts,
and administrative talent of the US. In April 1916, the
National Academy of Sciences created the National
Research Council (NRC) to organize scientific research
in government, industry and educational institutions
to ensure the national security and welfare of the
United States (Russell 2001, 31). This body spun off
many committees and specialty subgroups to organize
and manage the supernumerous aspects of the industrial war effort.
America Enters the Chemists

War
Notwithstanding the alleged revolution in warfare
that chemical weapons represented after the initial
German deployments in Belgium in May 1915, it was
not until April 1917 (the same month that America finally declared war on the Central Powers) that the NRC
formed its Subcommittee on Noxious Gases (Vilensky
2005, 16). It was placed under the joint auspices of the
Federal Bureau of Mines, the American Chemical Society and the Chemistry Committee of the NRC. By July
1917, fifteen thousand chemists had responded to a
survey asking for help in the war effort (Vilensky 2005,
16). But it was not until the July 1917 battlefield debut
of mustard gas (2,2-dichlorodiethyl sulfide, a greenish
liquid at room temperature) that the USArmy showed
a real interest in chemical warfare or in acquiring their
own offensive capabilities. Allied research teams
scrambled to match and counter Germanys diabolical
new weapon, which did not require actual breathing
into the lungs to do its damage. As General Black Jack
Pershing commented, after arriving in France in time
for its inglorious premiere, the impression was that
the Germans had now thrown every consideration of
humanity to the winds (Price 1997, 58).
Thus, a simple respirator-mask was no longer an
effective defensive measure. Absorption of the mustard
gas through the skin was just as effective as breathing
it in, producing horrible blisters and blindness a few
hours after initial exposure, and it was persistent for
several weeks after deployment. It was often mixed
with other agents such as phosgene, as by itself mustard gas was usually not fatal. However, the terrible
suffering and wounds it caused and the long rehabilitation process required meant that seriously affected
soldiers became noncombatants, tying up valuable
medical and support services for extended periods of
time (Christianson 2010, 3538). As such, mustard gas
was more effective as a defensive weapon and to harass
enemy concentrations or deny avenues for advance.
Effective defense now included more expensive, heavy,
cumbersome protective coverings for the whole body
that made life in the trenches even more miserable.
The USArmy Ordnance Department built mustardgas manufacturing and shell-filling plants at the military
reservation at Gunpowder Neck, which became Edgewood Arsenal, on a narrow peninsula protruding into
Chesapeake Bay, Maryland (Tucker 2006, 19). Some
1,200 scientists and engineers were employed there.
American and British researchers and engineers also
improved the speed and efficiency of the manufacturing process, as well as increasing the lethality of the
original German formulation. By wars end, 675tons
of toxic agents (primarily phosgene and mustard) were
being produced each week, so that America was outproducing all other belligerents combined, although
very little was actually shipped to Europe (Brophy 1959,
13). Much of the USArmys stockpile was dumped in
deep Atlantic waters during the winter of 191920,
50miles off the coast of Maryland, in sealed metal
drums (Christianson 2010, 41).
By the end of May 1917, the Bureau of Mines had
arranged for laboratory facilities at 21universities, and
more institutions were recruited later. The main labs
for conducting research on poison gases were sited at
Catholic University of America (CUA) and American
University (AU), on the outskirts of Washington,DC
(Vilensky 2005, 1718). At the time, AU consisted of
one completed building, but it grew to 153 by wars
end. The CWS also established an experimental testing

station (AUES) to test the effects of their creations,
outside the city on a tract of 509acres. The volunteer
civilian chemists and academic administrators who
were hired to research and develop chemical weapons
and defensive countermeasures were often given reserve military commissions. At Catholic University, a
young Northwestern University chemistry professor,
now Captain Winford Lewis, became the head of Organic Unit No3 of the Offense Research Station in the
summer of 1917 (Vilensky 2005, 112). His direct superior was Harvard chemistry professor and newly
minted captain JamesB Conant (soon promoted to
major).2 Together with many others they would create,
test and produce lewisite as Americas answer to the
mustard gas that was replacing phosgene as the most
dreaded scourge of the Chemists War.3
Lewis and Conants task upon commencing their
patriotic duties was to develop an acutely toxic offensive chemical weapon before the Germans could. The
preliminary specifications required that it be: (1)effective in small concentrations; (2)difficult to protect
against; (3)capable of injuring all parts of the body;
(4)easily manufactured in large quantities; (5)cheap
to produce; (6)composed of readily available materials;
(7)easy and safe to transport; (8)hard to detect; and
most importantly, (9)deadly (Vilensky 2005, 20).
Lewiss search for the king of war gases led him to
examine a variety of compounds, including organic
derivatives of arsenic. After Lewiss successful synthesis
of a promising candidate, several weeks of tests confirmed its suitability as an offensive agent for warfare.
With the assistance of Conant, Unit No3 developed a
process for producing and purifying lewisite in small
batches. The toxicity was estimated to be 75times
higher than mustard, and it accounted for numerous
casualties among the teams at CUA and AUES, and even
local farm animals and wildlife.4
Conant would go on to a very successful career as a scientific administrator, becoming a chief protg of Vannevar Bush in WWII, a
high-level manager in the Manhattan Project, an ambassador, and a trusted science and education advisor to postwar American presidents (Vilensky 2005, 8688).
3
Lewisite has a rather contested origin. In addition to wartime German research teams, a number of other chemists later claimed to
have produced it before Lewis. One was an academic Jesuit priest, Father JuliusA Nieuwland (18781936), who did his doctoral research
on the reactions of acetylene and was awarded the first PhD in chemistry at CUA in 1904. Nieuwlands discovery was accidentalone
whiff put him in the CUA infirmary for a week, but his doctoral thesis was used by Lewis in his research into chemical weapons. See
Vilensky (2005) for details on the origins of lewisite and the biographical background of its American inventors.
4
In one incident at AUES, a small accidental release of lewisite travelled outside the confines of the base, reached the farmyard of retired USSenator NathanB Scott and resulted in the deaths of several animals and birds. It was soon explained in a Washington Post story
as a test of German mustard gas that had gone wrong.
2
15
After initial development and testing at CUA and

AUES, the task of coordination of the process of scaling
up to larger production was passed onto Major Conant,
who was transferred to the Development Division of
CWS. An abandoned motor plant in Willoughby, Ohio,
was located in July 1918; it was within commuting
distance of Cleveland, the site of the gas-mask factory
and testing station operated by the Bureau of Mines
at Nela Park. There was intense pressure to ready a
supply of lewisite (in the range of 3,000 tons) for the
planned spring 1919 Allied offensive that promised to
push the Germans out of France and finally end the
War (Vilensky 2005, 3740).
Major Conant and the assigned army personnel
quickly began the laborious process of converting the
old Ben Hur motor plant to its new purpose of producing lewisite. No cost was spared, and the highest priority was granted to acquiring and purchasing the needed
equipment and infrastructure. Stringent security
measures were employed, including a barbed-wire
perimeter fence with armed guards on around-theclock patrol, and a temporary barracks and mess-hall
were built on the site. Some $5million was invested
just to construct and equip the facility. By early November 1918, 22officers and 542enlisted men were
working in production operations (Vilensky 2005, 43).
Then the news of the Armistice arrivedthe war was
over.
Aftermath of the Chemists War

In all, some 125,000 tons of poison gases were
expended during the conflict, versus some 2million
tons of high explosives and 50billion rounds of smallarms ammunition (Spiers 2010, 27). Chemical weapons,
despite the disproportionate publicity that their use
sparked in the popular media, accounted for less than
5per cent of all combat fatalities.5 Most of these (about
50,000) were Russian soldiers on the Eastern Front,
where human attack waves of poorly protected infantry
were easily slaughtered en masse by chemical barrages.
Very little lewisite was actually produced by the end
of the war, and none was used in combat. Instead, the
combat arms of the CWS attached to the American

Expeditionary Forces (AEF) in France largely relied on
British stocks of mustard gas and phosgene. By the end
of the conflict, about 15per cent of American artillery
shells were filled with these chemical agents, and almost 30per cent of AEF battlefield casualties were due
to exposure to chemical weapons, although these were
seldom (less than 2per cent) fatal (Spiers 2010, 3644).
Therefore, some sober commentators viewed the resources lavished on chemical weapons programs as a
waste, and the weapons themselves an overall failure
in terms of producing decisive results.
However, had the conflict lasted well into 1919,
there were plans for a much enlarged and vigorous use
of poison gases, including lewisite (Christianson 2010,
4042). One of these plans was to drop lewisite canisters to exterminate all animal life in the strategic German fortress city of Metz, once the Allies had pushed
German forces out of France (and thus out of range of
easy retaliation). A Colonel Walker, stationed at Edgewood Arsenal, elaborated in December, 1918:
Our idea was to have containers that would hold a
ton of mustard gas and lewisite carried over fortresses like Metz or Coblenz by plane The gas,
being heavier than air, would then slowly settle and
disperse. A one-ton container could thus be made
to account for perhaps an acre of territory, and not
one living thing, not even a rat, would live through
it. The planes were made and successfully demonstrated, the containers were made, and we would
be turning out the gas in the requisite quantities
in time for the planned offensive. (Christianson
2010, 40)
An even more ambitious plan was to deliver several
large chemical bombs to Berlin using long-range bombers, which had only been developed towards the end
of the conflict. Thus we have the first hint of a strategy
of carpet bombingnot with high explosive or incendiary bombs, but with a deadly mist of lewisite and
mustard targeting the legions of factory workers and
the large civilian population that supplied the labour
and essential services for the industrial war machine.
One of the more influential gas casualties was a young lance-corporal named Adolf Hitler, caught in a chemical artillery barrage in
October 1918, near Ypres. His account of the experience in Mein Kampf may go some way toward explaining the nonuse of poison gases
in combat by Germany in WWII (Tucker 2006, 1920). Hitlers views on race hygiene, on the other hand, did allow for the use of lethal
gases, first in exterminating the unfit as part of Nazi eugenics, and then Jews and other targeted racial groups as part of the Final
Solution.
5
16
Starting in 1919, numerous articles began to appear

in the popular press, as well as various scientific journals and trade publications, hailing the efforts of
American chemists and engineers for their vital role in
winning the war for democracy. With titles like Dew
of Death, Our Super-Poison Gas or Dealing Death
from the Air Three Drops at a Time, these articles
did more to fan the fears of the already nervous and
revolted public rather than stirring up patriotic support
for the CWS and Yankee wonder-weapons (Vilensky
2005, 5362). Not surprisingly, lewisite and other war
gases began to be featured in fictional works of mass
annihilation, three decades before their nuclear successors would come to dominate the genre. In a more
scholarly article, Whittemore (1975) analyzed the
motivations and perceptions of gas warfare advocates
in the Great War:
How did the chemists involved view their accomplishments? The greatest actual impact the Chemical Warfare Service had on the war was undoubtedly the distribution of gas masks and the
production of tons of mustard gas. The researchers,
however, came to view the development of Lewisite as their greatest achievement, even though
it was never actually used in the war. The power
of this gas was emphasized for propaganda purposes and exaggerated by the popular imagination.
By the end of the war, its properties were believed
to be fantastic:
It was invisible; it was a sinking gas, which would
search out the refugees of dugouts and cellars;
if breathed it killed at once Wherever it settled
on the skin, it produced a poison which penetrated the system and brought almost certain
death. It was inimical to all life, animal and
vegetable. Masks alone were of no use against
it An expert said that a dozen Lewisite bombs,
might, with a favourable wind, have eliminated
the entire population of Berlin. (p154)
As the publicity about lewisite spread, it prompted
active debates in the public realm as well as government, military and scientific circles. Not surprisingly,
most ordinary Americans reacted with horror and revulsion, just as the previous anti-German propaganda
campaigns had intended. Or, having lost friends or
relatives and seeing the scars and wounds of veterans
(from whatever cause) they wanted to ban chemical
weapons along with any future occurrence of war.
Similar reactionary and pacifist sentiments were

widespread in Europe. Price asserts that unquestioned
faith in the beneficence of technological progress was
radically challenged by the disillusioning experience
of the war (Price 1997, 69). The articles of the Versailles Treaty included strengthened provisions against
the use of poisonous or asphyxiating gases and banned
their research, development and manufacture in Germany (Tucker 2006, 2022). The international peace
conferences that followed the establishment of the
League of Nations also made specific prohibitions on
the development, stockpiling and future use of deadly
chemical weapons.
It was at this point, amid swirling negative public
reaction and government threats to cancel research or
production contracts and disband the CWS, that the
scientists and military leaders who had become ardent
converts to the cause were enlisted in a convoluted
and protracted public campaign to preserve their
threatened profession. Conant, Lewis and even the
good Father Nieuwlands were interviewed and paraded
before the press or at militarygovernment hearings
over the next decade. More than any other luminary,
however, it was the tireless campaigning of General
Amos Fries, the CWS chief of the AEF and future general
in command of the expanded service, that tipped the
balance towards the permanent establishment of the
CWS, later to be expanded to corps strength in the
post-1938 buildup to World WarII (Vilensky 2005,
5669).
Fries had been initially reluctant to lead the first
regiment of army engineers to be trained for gaswarfare operations in 1917. Like many regular army
officers, he had a distaste for new, unconventional
weapons, especially something as insidious as poison
gases. By the end of the war, however, Fries had become an enthusiastic, almost Darwinian advocate of
their potential in modern, progressive scientific
warfare:
Chemical warfare is an agency that must not only
be reckoned with by every civilized nation in the
future, but is one which civilized nations should
not hesitate to use. When properly safeguarded
with masks and other safety devices, it gives to the
most scientific and ingenious people a great advantage over the less scientific and less ingenious. Then
why should the United States or any other highly
civilized country consider giving up chemical warfare? (Tucker 2006, 20)
17
Thus began a long public campaign linking chemical

weapons to scientific progress, emphasizing their
humanity and desirability versus their more conventional counterparts, as well as their peaceful applications in agriculture, industry and even household use.
For General Fries, the most pressing task was to convince the Wilson administration, the Army brass and
Congress to preserve the CWS as a separate service
instead of proceeding with the planned amalgamation
with the Army Corps of Engineers, six months after
cessation of hostilities. In May 1919, Fries urged his
subordinate officers in the CWS and the scientists who
had been vital in the development of lewisite to fight
a political battle of persuasion and self-preservation:
What we need now is good, sound publicity along
lines showing the importance of Chemical Warfare,
its powerful and far-reaching effects in war, and its
humanity when you compare the number of deaths
from bullets and high explosives for each hundred
injured by those means. (Russell 2001, 55)
In this extended campaign, Fries had many allies;
among the staunchest were the American Chemical
Society and its Journal of Industrial and Engineering
Chemistry. The journal published a series of articles in
the immediate postwar period on the great contributions of the Chemical Warfare Service. Readers were
encouraged to write to congressmen, senators and
strategic committee chairs to advocate for the continuance of the CWS. The Chemical Society also lobbied
politicians and sent official resolutions from its meetings to responsible leaders. The pressure soon paid
off, as Secretary of War Newton Baker would acknowledge in August 1919:
The Government of the United States, and particularly the War Department, owes a debt of gratitude
and appreciation to the chemists of the United
States I do not believe it will be discovered that
any profession contributed a larger percent of its
members directly to the military service, or the
results of the activities of any profession were more
essential to our national success than that of the
chemists. (Russell 2001, 50)
A revision of the National Defense Act in 1920 made

the CWS a permanent separate service of the USArmy,
although it was greatly reduced in size compared to
its wartime establishment of almost 25,000 officers
and troops. Later the same year, Amos Fries (see picture
on page12) became the commanding general (Kleber
and Birdsell 2003, 2425). Although the CWS had narrowly avoided elimination as a separate entity within
the Army, the victory would be a pyrrhic one if larger
political movements to ban chemical weapons were
not averted. When the new Republican president, WarrenG Harding, was elected in November 1920, the
vocal antiwar movement gained an influential domestic
advocate and considerable international momentum.
Despite the refusal of the Republican-dominated United
States Senate to ratify Americas entry into the new
League of Nations, Americaas one of the new Great
Powerswas seeking to reduce primarily offensive
military forces and thus reduce the risk of future global
conflicts.
The Washington Arms Conference (November
1921February 1922) was a precedent-setting event in
international relations, the first real international disarmament conference in history (Russell 2001, 5662).
In addition to proposing to ban submarine warfare and
limit the size of battleships and naval fleets, there was
also a provision to ban the development, testing,
stockpiling and use of chemical weapons. While the
American State Department and some elements of the
USArmy were eager proponents of the ban on chemical
weapons, General Fries and others in the CWS mobilized their own forces in support of the necessity for
continuing research, development and maintaining a
stock of weapons and trained gas-warfare troops to
act as a deterrent to wara sort of ancestor to mutually assured destruction (Russell 2001, 59).6
Fries and his cohort of chemical warriors lobbied
to preserve their profession, asserting that the mission of every chemical warfare officer was to carry the
news of chemical warfare, to talk it at every opportunity, and to clear away many of the false ideas about
it that exist in the minds of civilians as well as the
military (Russell 2001, 59). Targeting the civilian front,
A fascinating British analogue can be found in Callinicus: A Defence of Chemical Warfare, authored in 1925 by the renowned British biochemist and WWI gas-warfare veteran JBSHaldane. One of the developers of the modern evolutionary synthesis, Haldane later lent his
political support to Stalins USSR and his professional credibility to its Marxist-Socialist sciences, especially Lysenkoism (Kohlman 2012).
Haldane echoes Fries in his appraisal of chemical warfare as a humane, modern, progressive alternative to the butchery of vast armies in
stalemated conflicts, and decries the sentimentalist opponents as the Scribes and Pharisees of our age (Haldane 1925, 32).
18
Fries published an article in Current History, amid the

furor of publicity over the Washington Conference.
Entitled The Future of Poison Gas, it argued for the
efficacy and necessity of chemical weapons both in
armed conflict and as an effective deterrent to future
wars:
The last war has been remarkable for the growth
of understanding of the fundamental importance
of chemistry in peace and war The war of the
future will involve every activity of a nation and of
every inhabitant of that nation. Every nation of
first-class importance has continued to pursue the
study of chemical warfare. Gas is the only weapon
used in war which can be counted upon to do its
work as efficiently at night as in the daytime.
Chemical warfare has come to stay, and in just the
proportion as the United States gives chemical
warfare its proper place within the military establishment, just in that proportion will [we] be ready
to meet any and all comers in the future. (Fries
1921, 421)
Fries then argued for the democratic levelling effect
of chemical weapons in modern war, and their ultimate
security promise for deterrence against large-scale
invasions over land or sea (see Figure1). He also tapped
into the strong public sentiment for a return to pre-War
American isolationism and neutrality, backed by a
scientific guarantee against a future war:
War is like dueling. So long as it was a safe sport
for Kings, noblemen and statesmen could carry
on wars for years without harm to themselves
But today, with the development of chemical bombs
and airplanes, no statesman or ruler is any more
immune to attack than a private soldier. So it will
be with chemical bombs. They have not only made
the coasts of the United States impregnable, but
they have vastly decreased the possibilities of another long war.
Every development of science that makes warfare
more universal and more scientific makes for permanent peace by making war intolerable if we
are forced into a war we shall use every known
chemical method of warfare against hostile forces
wherever they are located. That would be our permanent guarantee against attack. (p422)
In the same issue of the journal, in fact the very
next article, Growth of the Chemical Industry, Carter
(1921) lauds the remarkable results of the World War

in creating a vast new business in the United States
(p423). He cites a 247per cent increase in the aggregate value of chemical products made in the USA from
1914 to 1919. He also details the enormous growth of
various chemical industry sectors, such as dyes, fertilizers (important for making high explosives) and lifesaving drugs. Carter praised the progress in research
by academic and industrial chemists, coordinated for
maximum efficiency, and highlighted the building of
new lab facilities by major research universities. Significantly for postwar scientific research, Carter also
welcomed the establishment of new philanthropic
foundations (such as the Chemical Foundation) and the
expansion of existing ones (Carnegie, Rockefeller and
others) for chemical research and development. He
also explicitly linked the growth of American chemistry
to the CWS and our Army of Chemists:
Although a few great corporations had signified
their appreciation of the importance of chemistry
by establishing laboratories for the control of processes and for research to improve their products
before the war, the mobilization of two thousand
American chemists at the Government experimental
research station in Washington by the Chemical
Warfare Service when America entered the war may
be said to have marked the real beginning of our
chemical industry. (p423)
Lest one be persuaded into thinking that this exuberance is simply the rosy afterglow of American chemists successful participation in the Allied victory, before
other events and crises intervened to sober American
enthusiasm, Bland (1977) offers this analysis of the
situation in a historical survey of the ascendancy of the
United States to global scientific supremacy:
Although the NRC and American scientists generally
accomplished little of immediate tactical value to
the war effort the experience had two profound
influences on U.S. science: (1)it infused research
into the economy so thoroughly that the rise of
industrial research as a major branch of the countrys scientific establishment may be dated from
the war period; (2)it accustomed scientists to
working together on cooperative, large-scale research efforts aimed at the quick solution of immediate problems. In science, as in many other
areas, valuable lessons were learned that would be
applied during the Second World War. (p88)
19
From Dreaded Weapon to

Commercial Product to
Extermination of Enemies
pest control, especially to agricultural pesticides and

consumer insecticides. The CWS and a host of private
companies pursued the use of both existing war gases
and new formulations for use as insecticides and fumigants (Russell 2001, 7494). Russell devotes an entire
As the 1920s progressed, both Fries and the chemical
chapter, Minutemen in Peace, to this extended and
industry continued their public campaign to persuade
very lucrative program to link the previous use of chemithe American public to accept chemical weapons and
cals for war to this new war against nature. It was, in
warfare as a vital part of the modern age. One of the
many ways, the forerunner of the rather ill-fated Project
most important and productive campaigns was the apPlowshare to promote the peaceful uses of atomic
plication of research on poison gases to the problem of
weapons in the early Cold War period (Kohlman 2012).
Using many of the same arguments and imagery that General
Fries had used to preserve the CWS
and establish the validity of chemical weapons, industrial chemists
and corporations offered a pantheon of existing and new poisons to
exterminate the peacetime threats
to American prosperity and public
health. One of the most popular was
the patented insecticide produced
by Standard Oil under the brand
name Flit (Russell 2001, 8586). By
the mid-20s, Flitguns became the
most popular way of exterminating
insect pests, and sales boomed
when they hired Theodor Geisel
(later better known as DrSeuss) for
their advertising copy (see Figure2).
Not only was this commercialization
program healthy for the corporate
bottom line, but it gradually adapted the public to the ideology of a
scientific war and the use of synthetic chemicals to exterminate all
manner of pests, including the twolegged varietyboth foreign enemies and domestic criminals. By the
time the Second World War again
interrupted Americas Century of
Progress, the link between chemistry, the military and the extermi
nation of enemies had been made
(see Figure3). The American government and public had been effectively converted to the new paraFigure 1. The chemist-warrior as defender of the nation, two years before the start digm of Annihilation (Russell 2001,
of World War II (Ede 2004, 511).
95118).
20
Figure 2.Figure
A sampling
of ofadvertising
a popular
2. A sampling
advertising forfor
Flit,Flit,
a popular
interwar interwar
pesticide pesticide and sprayer system, made by
sprayer system,
by Stanco, a division
of J D Rockefellers
Standard
Stanco, aanddivision
of J made
D Rockefellers
Standard
Oil. Fans
of his later animated cartoons or popular
Oil.
Fans
of
his
later
animated
cartoons
or
popular
childrens
books
will
childrens books will recognize the whimsical artistry of Theodor Geisel, aka Dr Seuss. Russell (1996)
the whimsical artistry of Theodor Geisel, aka Dr Seuss. Russell
has morerecognize
propagandist
imagesincluding wartime ads for exterminating human insects using toxic
(1996) has more propagandist imagesincluding wartime ads for extergas.
minating human insects using toxic gas.
21
Figure 3. An elaborate American WWII bomber-nose painting, illustrating the popular connection between chemical weapons,
commercial pesticides and the ideology of extermination in Total War.
Conclusion
I have argued that the mobilization of American
chemists and engineers in World WarI, in particular
the Chemical Warfare Service, served as a prototype
of Big Science, a template for the Military-Industrial
Complex and an important saltation toward Total
War. It also fixed in the publics perception the importance of advanced science and technology in war,
in national security, and in societal progress and
prosperity. These same themes can be alternately
illustrated by two photo-plates from ACMorrisons
Man in a Chemical World (1937), published by the
American Chemical Society. The book was part of an
ACS public relations campaign to boost government
22
funding of industrial chemistry research and education during the lean years of the Great Depression
(see Figure 4, and also Figure1). Americas triumphant recovery from the Depression was fuelled in
no small measure by the coming of the next World
War, even before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor,
as the United States reprised its role as the Arsenal
of Democracy. But when It was over, it was not to be
the research or industrial chemists that were to be
lionized, it was the atomic physicists and their army
of engineers that were hailed as the saviours of Democracy, the Nation and the World. The newly discovered annihilative power of the split atom had
trumped the potency of the mere moleculein
spades. Physics ruled.
Figure 4: One of the progressive-futuristic drawings from Man in a Chemical World (1937), sponsored
by the American Chemical Society, here idealizing a secular benediction of society by the chemical
industry (Ede 2004, 505).
23
References
Bland, LI. 1977. The Rise of the United States to World
Scientific Power, 1840-1940. The History Teacher 11, no1:
7592.
Brophy, L. 1959. The Chemical Warfare Service: Organizing for War.
Washington, DC: Department of the Army, Office of the
Chief of Military History.
Carter, CF. 1921. Growth of the Chemical Industry. Current
History 15, no3: 42329.
Christianson, S. 2010. Fatal Airs: The Deadly History and
Apocalyptic Future of the Lethal Gases That Threaten Our World.
Santa Barbara, Calif: Praeger.
Ede, A. 2004. Creating an Image of Science: Persuasion and
Iconography in A. Cressy Morrisons Man in a Chemical
World. Canadian Journal of History 39, no3: 489513.
Fries, A. 1921. The Future of Poison Gas. Current History 15,
no3: 41922.
Haldane, J B S. 1925. Callinicus: A Defense of Chemical Warfare.
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Kleber, B, and DBirdsell. 2003. The Chemical Warfare Service:
Chemicals in Combat. Honolulu: University Press of the
Pacific. Orig pub US Department of Defense 1965.
Kohlman, M. 2012. Project Plowshare and the Peaceful Uses
of Nuclear Explosions. Alberta Science Education Journal 42,
no2: 1831.
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Education and Research on America and Britain, 18711941.
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Morrison, A C. 1937. Man in a Chemical World. New York: Scribner.
Price, R. 1997. The Chemical Weapons Taboo. Ithaca, NY: Cornell
University Press.
Russell, EP. 1996. Speaking of Annihilation: Mobilizing for
War Against Human and Insect Enemies, 1914-1945. Journal
of American History 82, no4: 150529.
. 2001. War and Nature: Fighting Humans and Insects with
Chemicals from World WarI to Silent Spring. New York:
Cambridge University Press.
Spiers, EM. 2010. A History of Chemical and Biological Weapons.
London: Reaktion Books.
Trumpener, U. 1975. The Road to Ypres: The Beginnings of Gas
Warfare in World WarI. Journal of Modern History 47, no3:
46080.
Tucker, JB. 2006. War of Nerves: Chemical Warfare from World
WarI to Al-Qaeda. New York: Pantheon Books.
Vilensky, J. 2005. Dew of Death: The Story of Lewisite, Americas
World WarI Weapon of Mass Destruction. Bloomington, Ind:
Indiana University Press.
Whittemore, GF. 1975. World WarI, Poison Gas Research, and
the Ideals of American Chemists. Social Studies of Science5,
no2: 13563.
Withrow, J. 1916. The American Chemist and the Wars
Problems. Science43, no1120: 83542.
Fostering Student Metacognition and

Personal Epistemology in the Physics
Classroom Through the Pedagogical use of
Mnemonic Strategies
Michael Paul Lukie
Abstract
Students can use memorized mnemonic strategies
taught to them by their physics teachers as a way to
help them remember complicated formulas. However,
many students might not develop a deep conceptual
understanding of physics as a result of the use of such
strategies. This theoretical paper proposes that physics
teachers can use the teaching and understanding of
mnemonic strategies, as one form of cognitive strategy,
to foster students metacognition and their personal
epistemology by focusing their attention on what it
means to understand and to solve physics problems.
Research suggests that most physics students adopt a
surface approach to learning in terms of doing exercises and learning formulas (Prosser, Walker and Millar
1996) and that they do not understand the requisite
procedures required to learn and understand that
material (Thomas 2012b, 33). The mnemonic device
would be presented as such a requisite procedure,
providing the physics teacher with an opportunity to
teach students about their metacognitive knowledge,
control and awareness (Flavel 1979) about when, why
and how to use the mnemonic device. To further such
an understanding of the nature of physics and physics
problem solving, it is important that students develop
their personal epistemology, or what Hofer (2001)
defines as knowing about knowing (p363). This is
because epistemological understanding is fundamental
to students understanding and critical thinking development. It is proposed that teachers can use mnemonic
devices to develop their students epistemological
sophistication by elucidating and promoting the
e pistemological assumptions that underlie their critical

thinking. If the teachers promote a strictly objective
absolutism by providing the student with a mnemonic
device to memorize and apply narrowly, then knowledge is seen by students as simply accumulating from
textbook-like facts and is disconnected from the human
mind. However, if teachers promote a constructivist
epistemology such that students, after initial exposure
to mnemonic devices, are encouraged to develop their
own mnemonic device(s), then knowledge may be seen
by students as a theory of mind that recognises the
primacy of humans as knowledge constructors capable
of generating a multiplicity of valid representations of
reality (Kuhn 1999, 22). Since many physics students
also concurrently study mathematics, the transfer and
durability of the mnemonic device is important for
other domains and metacognition is seen as a potential mediator of improvement (Georghiades 2000, 119)
for this transfer. As a result of students developing
mnemonic devices, they will develop their metacognitive skills, personal epistemological sophistication and
the knowledge about when and why to select and
apply strategies that are most appropriate for a problem (Taasoobshirazi and Farley 2013, 448).
Introduction
This theoretical paper proposes that physics teachers might use the teaching and understanding of
mnemonic strategies, as one form of cognitive strategy,
to foster students metacognition and their personal
epistemology by focusing their attention on what it
means to understand and to solve physics problems.
25
Since students who are more adaptively metacognitive

are typically more successful learners than those who
are less adaptively metacognitive (Thomas 2013,4),
it is important for physics teachers to promote metacognition as part of their pedagogical practice. Further,
students are typically unaware that there are different
ways of knowing; many students fall into an objectivist
epistemology, where knowledge is considered by them
to be contained in textbooks and independent of a
thinking being (Lorsbach and Tobin 1992,1). Objectivism, according to Roth and Roychoudhury (1994) is the
default epistemology (p26) predominant in most
schools; Lorsbach and Tobin (1992) agree, writing that
the objectivist epistemology is dominant in most educational settings today (p1). Many physics students
are accustomed to learning the truths found in textbooks, and science teaching has traditionally focused
on the direct transmission of these science truths (Roth
and Roychoudhury 1994).
Many physics teachers provide students with mnemonic strategies as a way to help them remember
complicated formulas, but students might not develop
a deep conceptual understanding of physics as a result
of the use of such strategies. However, if teachers
promote a constructivist epistemology such that the
students, after initial exposure to mnemonic devices,
are encouraged to develop their own mnemonic
device(s), then students may replace the notion of
truth with the notion of viability, since there are
many alternative constructions of reality that may exist,
none of which can ever claim truth for itself. Roth
and Roychoudhury contend that the constructivist
position is a more mature form of knowing and that
many educators have accepted constructivism as a
more appropriate set of beliefs to direct teaching and
learning (Roth and Roychoudhury 1994,7).
I have been teaching high school physics at the
University of Winnipeg since 2003 but have only recently begun to incorporate metacognition and student epistemology into my regular teaching practice.
I have begun teaching students about metacognition
and their personal epistemology when I have been
teaching mnemonic strategies within the physics kinematics unit, and have found that my students report
a greater understanding about their thinking and the
way they know how they know. This paper is being
written for physics teachers who teach mnemonic
strategies to their students; the suggestion is made
that the teaching of mnemonic strategies may be an
26
opportunity to also teach students about metacognition and epistemology. A brief review of the literature
related to metacognition and epistemology is presented. I then examine the mnemonic device, the
extent to which the literature reports how students
use these devices as cognitive strategies to assist their
learning and how metacognition may assist students
in retaining these strategies for longer periods of time.
Finally, I present how a physics teacher may use the
mnemonic device in a classroom setting to facilitate
the instruction of metacognition and student personal
epistemology.
Mnemonic Devices
The evidence for the effectiveness of mnemonic
devices to support metacognitive skills is supported
in the literature. Thomas writes that an effective science learner will possess cognitive strategies for
memorizing science material that they consider to be
important and that these strategies may include the
use of acronyms and mnemonics (Thomas 2012b, 32).
Kolencik and Hillwig (2011) write that mnemonic devices may be used to assist students in remembering
content information that would be otherwise difficult
for students to recall because the mnemonic helps
students to connect, to construct and to relate their
thinking to the content. Further, Kolencik and Hillwig
(2011) add that the key idea is that by coding information using vivid mental images, students can reliably
code both information and the structure of information, thus, using a type of metacognitive process
(p58). Levin and Levin (1990) suggest that when mnemonic devices are used to help acquire information,
the information is more easily applied when mnemonic
devices are employed. In addition, Wolfe (2001) explains that the mnemonic device assists the learner by
helping to link information stored in long-term memory
with new information the brain is receiving. Students
who have created their own mnemonic devices have
outperformed comparison students, as reported by
Mastropieri and Scruggs (1998), and Markowitz and
Jensen (1999) indicate that the use of mnemonic devices may increase student learning by two to three
times. Research into how teachers should use mnemonics in the classroom indicates that the important thing
to remember is to explain to the students why the
mnemonic device is being used and why it will work
(Kolencik and Hillwig 2011, 63).
What Is Metacognition?
Metacognition is the thinking about ones thinking;
it may be defined as ones knowledge, control and
awareness of ones thinking and learning (Thomas
2012a). It is the process of making thinking the object
of ones consideration and manipulation so that the
thinker may potentially control his or her cognition.
Cognition refers to thinking skills, processes and strategies, while metacognition refers to the metacognitive
knowledge, metacognitive control and metacognitive
awareness of these cognitive skills, processes and
strategies (Flavel 1979; Thomas 2013). Metacognitive
knowledge is knowledge about the thinking and learning
processes; this knowledge can be either declarative,
procedural or conditional. For a given cognitive skill,
process or strategy, declarative knowledge refers to
knowing that a given cognitive strategy may potentially
be used to solve a certain type of problem. Procedural
knowledge is knowledge about how to use the strategy
to solve the problem. Conditional knowledge refers to
what class of problem the strategy is applicable to.
Metacognitive awareness is the self-awareness the
thinker possesses in using a cognitive skill, process or
strategy, and metacognitive control is the control and
regulation of the learning process. Finally, as a result
of the thinker making cognition the object of consideration, the thinker may have a metacognitive experience
(Flavel 1979).
Metacognition and Instruction

A mnemonic device is a thinking skill, process or
strategy used to assist students with information retention, where the mnemonic device facilitates the translation of complicated information into a form that may
be more easily retained by the student. The mnemonic
device becomes metacognitive when the student is
able to differentiate between the declarative, procedural and conditional metacognitive knowledge necessary to help solve a physics problemthat is, about
when, why and how to apply the mnemonic device.
The student demonstrates declarative metacognitive
knowledge when he or she recognizes that the mnemonic can be used to solve a certain type of problem;
the student demonstrates procedural metacognitive
knowledge when he or she is able to understand the
mechanics of how the mnemonic is used to help solve
a problem; and the student demonstrates conditional
metacognitive knowledge when he or she can demonstrate the class of problem to which the mnemonic
applies. As a result of students designing their own
mnemonic device to help them remember formulas
and help them solve kinematics problems, for example,
it is envisaged that students metacognitve awareness
of their thinking will increase. Upon students reflecting
about the thinking processes they attended to in designing their mnemonic device, many students should
report a metacognitive experience resulting from having been stimulated by their teacher to think about
mnemonics in a way they had not done previously.
Since many physics students also concurrently study
mathematics, the transfer and durability of mnemonic
devices is important, and metacognition is seen as a
potential mediator of improvement (Georghiades
2000, 119) for this transfer. Georghiades asserts that
metacognition makes students more actively involved
in the learning process, makes them more responsible
for their learning and has a positive impact on students
abilities to both retain and transfer conceptions over
a longer duration. According to Georghiades, metacognition allows students to maintain a deeper understanding of the subject material because the learning
process is revisited, students are encouraged to be
reflective, students compare their prior and current
conceptions and students analyze and have an awareness of their difficulties. Although it is important for
physics teachers to provide metacognition instruction
to their students, Georghiades does caution that the
metacognitive feedback provided by the teacher to the
students should be appropriate, compatible and
accessible.
Student Physics Learning

The research into student physics learning indicates
that the mathematical representation of physics concepts was a real barrier to student understanding and
that many students had difficulty in using models and
relationships (Albe, Venturini and Lascours 2001).
Salam and Millar (2006) agree that the introduction
of formulas and other mathematical notations may
impede rather than promote the understanding of basic
physics principles. Students are often overwhelmed by
a large number of physics equations and they cannot
conceptually understand the relationships between the
variables, but they are able to algebraically manipulate
them. To mitigate these student problems, Willms,
27
Friesen and Milton (2009) suggest that effective teaching should include learning tasks that are thoughtfully
designed and that require and instill deep thinking
while immersing the student in disciplinary inquiry.
Thomas (2012b) suggests that current best practices
in science teaching should enhance students conceptual understanding of scientific concepts through
teaching approaches that promote scientific knowledge as a process of inquiry rather than with students
as passive learners. The suggestion is made that metacognition is one of these best practices and to improve
students science learning, there is a need to develop
and enhance their adaptive metacognition so that they
can learn science more effectively, efficiently, and with
increased understanding across science learning contexts (Thomas 2012b, 30). In addition, Thomas also
suggests that the science learning environment should
be more metacognitively orientated. Prosser, Walker
and Millar (1996) reported that students exhibit a
surface learning to physics, as a result of a predominantly textbook based and lecture style of teaching
(p47), since students do not make connections between ideas and representations, and instead focus on
memorization with little permanence for what has been
learned. The use of mnemonic devices for helping
students solve physics problems should therefore
provide students with an alternative to simply memorizing equations and should help provide students with
a more logical conceptual solution framework.
Epistemology
Epistemology is a theory of knowledge that explains
how we know what we know. When thought becomes
aware of itself and under the individuals control, the
thinker is put in charge of his or her knowing. When
the thinker is put in charge of his or her knowing, the
thinker is then able to decide what to believe and is
able to update and revise those beliefs as warranted
(Kuhn 1999). It is very important for students to know
what they know and to be able to justify why, because
the students skill in the conscious coordination of
theory and evidence also put them in a position to
evaluate the assertions of others (Kuhn 1999, 23),
their teachers and societal influences. According to
Kuhn, the development of students epistemological
understanding is a fundamental component of their
critical thinking because students must first recognize
the point of thinking before they engage in thinking.
28
Different Levels of Student

Epistemologies
There are a number of epistemological levels that
are typical in students. The complexity of the levels
may progress from simple realism to more advanced
constructivism, but a student may retain a given level
through time. Students who possess a realist epistemology believe that assertions are direct copies of some
given external reality and this reality is directly knowable. The absolutist understands assertions as facts,
either true or false, and they represent a reality that
can be directly knowable. The multiplist believes that
assertions are freely chosen opinions accountable only
to the holder of the opinion, and therefore reality cannot be directly knowable. The evaluative epistemology
believes that assertions are judgments that can be
evaluated by criteria evaluating argument and evidence, suggesting that reality is not directly knowable.
The objectivist epistemology contends that external
reality can be objectively known and that objective and
unconditional truth statements can be made about this
reality. The conceptualization of science in this way is,
then, a search for truths, and science is considered as
a way of discovering the laws, principles and theories
associated with reality (Lorsbach and Tobin 1992). Finally, the constructivist epistemology is a theory of
mind that recognises the primacy of humans as knowledge constructors capable of generating a multiplicity
of valid representations of reality (Kuhn 1999, 22)
where science is seen as the process that assists us in
making sense of the world.
Epistemological Understanding
Epistemological understanding is fundamental to
a students understanding and critical thinking development. Therefore, the teacher has the responsibility
to develop within his or her students a sophisticated
epistemology that promotes such critical thinking. If
the teacher promotes a strictly objective absolutism,
then knowledge is seen by students as simply accumulating from textbook-like facts and is disconnected
from the human mind. If the teacher promotes a strictly
subjective multiplism, students will conceive knowledge as subject only to the tastes of the knower where
no truth is ever knowable (Kuhn 1999). What is required
is a pedagogy in which teachers promote, especially
in physics and science, a form of constructivism where

students are allowed to construct their knowledge to
advance their epistemology allowing for multiple representations of reality. Students should be given the
opportunity to try to understand their conception of
reality based upon experience so that their conception
of reality may progress into a more sophisticated epistemology in which theories and laws arise out of the
students attempt to purposefully achieve this understanding (Roth and Roychoudhury 1994).
The DAFIT Kinematics Acronym

I became interested in investigating the application
of metacognition and student epistemology to the
study of mnemonic devices because I was never satisfied with the level of my students understanding with
the DAFIT kinematics acronym I had given to them.
There are many different mnemonic or memory devices
used to assist students when solving physics problems,
and the acronym is a commonly used mnemonic where
a word is formed from the initial letters of words in a
series of words. Students are able to apply the acronym
to successfully solve kinematics problems, but they
may not exhibit a deep level of conceptual understanding when doing so. Since there are five physics formulas
required to solve kinematics problems, students often
find it difficult to determine which formula to select
for a given set of parameters; the DAFIT acronym facilitates the ease of this selection process. The DAFIT
method for solving kinematics problems involves
memorizing a single kinematic formula for each of the
five letters D, A, F, I and T and memorizing the word
DAFIT. The letters represent the variables for displacement, acceleration, final velocity, initial velocity and
time, and they correspond to one of five specific physics formulas (see Table1). The way the DAFIT method
is used is that for a given kinematics problem, if the
student does not have information about a certain
variable, the student selects the corresponding formula
for that variable associated with the corresponding
letter in the acronym. If, for example, the problem
provides no information about displacement, the formula vf=vi+at is selected because it is the formula that
corresponds to the letter D, the displacement.
When the DAFIT acronym becomes metacognitive
for the student, the student has control and awareness
of the acronym cognitive strategy and is able to differentiate between the declarative, procedural and
conditional metacognitive knowledge necessary to help
solve a physics problemthat is, about when, why and
how to apply the acronym (see Figure1, page 30).
Fostering Student
Metacognition and Personal
Epistemology in the Physics
Classroom
To foster student metacognition and epistemology
in the physics classroom, a lesson may include the following series of steps.
Fostering Student Epistemology

1. To initiate a discussion about epistemology the
teacher may begin by asking students the question,
How do you know what you know about physics?
Some students may report that they know physics
based upon what they have learned from what their
Table 1. The DAFIT Acronym for Kinematics Formulas

Acronym Letter
Variable
Variable Name [units]
Formula
displacement [m]
= vi+at
vfv=v
f i+at
vf
d t+1/2at
= vit+at2 2
d=v
i
vi
acceleration [ m2 ]
s
m
final velocity [ s ]
m
initial velocity [ s ]
time [s]
vf2 = vi2+2ad
d = (vi+v
+vf)t
)t
d=1/2(v
i
f
d t-1/2at
= vft-at2 2
d=v
f
29
to help solve a physics problemthat is, about when, why and how to apply the acronym
(see Figure 1).
Figure 1: The Metacognitive Application of the DAFIT Cognitive Strategy
METACOGNITION
Knowledge
COGNITION
COGNITION
DAFIT
acronym
acronym
METACOGNITION
Control
Awareness
Declarative
Awareness Self-monitoring
Knowledge
Control The awareness
The
DAFIT
acronym
can
be
used
to
that
one
can
Declarative
SelfThe awareness
Regulation of
The
DAFIT
acronym
monitoring
that
one
can
solve kinematics problems
control ones
the acronym
can be used to solve
control ones
Regulation
of
thinking
when
Procedural
kinematics
problems
thinking when
the acronym Is the DAFIT
using
the
DAFIT
What are the proceduresusing
necessary
Procedural
acronym
the DAFIT
Is the DAFIT
acronymacronym
What
arethe
the DAFIT acronym?
to use
acronym
working?
procedures necessary
working?
Conditional
to use the DAFIT
When and why the DAFIT acronym
acronym?
may be appropriate to use
Conditional
When and why the

DAFIT acronym may
Figure 1: The metacognitive application
of the DAFIT
be appropriate
to use cognitive strategy
Fostering
Student
and Personal
Epistemology intheir
the thinking
Physics Classroom
teacher
has toldMetacognition
them or from memorizing
textbook
when using it. The teacher will infacts, an objectivist epistemology. Other students
struct students on the use of the acronym, indicatTo foster
student that
metacognition
epistemology
in the physics
may explain
they knowand
physics
from experiingclassroom,
that it can abelesson
used may
to organize information in
ments or from experiencing how nature works
physics just as has already been done in their
include
the following
series
of steps. epistemology.
through
their senses,
a constructivist
mathematics classes.
When I have asked this question, however, many
3. The teacher will now describe two acronyms from
Fostering
Student
students
claimEpistemology
that they know physics from what
mathematics with which students are already familtheir teacher tells them and through the memorizaiar, and will provide a description of how acronyms
tion of textbook facts.
work in these contexts. The FOIL (first, outer, inner,
2. The teacher could then explain that there are many
last) acronym for multiplying out brackets will be
different ways of knowing but that using experianalyzed first, and then the trigonometric acronym
ments and the senses is a more sophisticated way
SOH, CAH, TOA, for remembering the formulas for
of knowing physics. In promoting a constructivist
right-angle triangles. The teacher will explain that
epistemology, then, it is important that students
the five formulas involved in solving kinematics
are not given mnemonic devices to memorize, but
problems are difficult to remember and that, just
rather that they create them for themselves.
as in mathematics, an acronym may be used to help
remember the five kinematics formulas. In addition,
the teacher will suggest to students that a good
Fostering Student
acronym for kinematics is one that will also help
Metacognition
them decide which of the five formulas to pick when
solving problems. Emphasis will be made that the
1. To initiate a discussion about metacognition the
kinematics acronym should operate similarly to the
teacher may begin by asking students the following
way the SOH, CAH, TOA acronym operates in mathquestions. Have you ever thought about how you
ematics because it assists in both remembering the
think? What are some of the thinking strategies
formulas and selecting the correct formula.
you use in school to help you think?
4. The teacher will now challenge students to create
2. The teacher could then describe the acronym as
their own DAFIT acronym. Students will be made
one way to organize thinking, explaining that there
aware that the acronym is simply a tool to help
are many different thinking strategies. The metatheir thinking and that additional thinking procognition instruction will consist of the teacher
cesses are involved when they determine when,
describing how to use the acronym as a cognitive
why and how to apply the acronym to solve physics
strategy and will seek to develop students knowlproblems.
edge, control and awareness about how to organize
30
5. Finally, once the students have solved some kinematics problems with their own acronyms, the
teacher will reveal the DAFIT method; similarities
and differences can then be discussed.
Kuhn, D. 1999. A Developmental Model of Critical Thinking.

Educational Researcher 28, no2: 1646.
Conclusion
Lorsbach, AW, and KTobin. 1992. Constructivism as a Referent

for Science Teaching. In Research Matters to the Science
Teacher, ed FLorenz, KCochran, JKrajcik and PSimpson.
NARST Monograph, Number Five. Manhattan, Kan: National
Association for Research in Science Teaching.
This paper suggests that mnemonic devices such

as acronyms may be used as a pedagogical opportunity
to teach students about metacognition and their personal epistemology. As a result of students developing
mnemonic devices, they will develop their metacognitive skills and personal epistemological sophistication,
and students will be given the requisite metacognitive
tools to facilitate their deeper conceptual understanding when solving problems. When students reflect on
the thinking processes they attended to in designing
acronyms, many should report a metacognitive experience resulting from having been stimulated by their
teacher to think about acronyms in a way they had not
done previously. By challenging students to think about
how they know what they know about physics, student
critical thinking may be promoted as students attend
to a more sophisticated constructivist epistemology
rather than the objectivist epistemology many students
currently exhibit.
References
Albe, V, PVenturini and JLascours. 2001. Electromagnetic
Concepts in Mathematical Representation of Physics.
Journal of Science Education and Technology 10, no2:
197203.
Flavel, JH. 1979. Metacognition and Cognitive Monitoring: A
New Area of Cognitive-Developmental Inquiry. American
Psychologist 34, no10: 90611.
Georghiades, P. 2000. Beyond Conceptual Change Learning in
Science Education: Focusing on Transfer, Durability and
Metacognition. Educational Research 42, no2: 11939.
Levin, ME, and JRLevin. 1990. Scientific Mnemonies: Methods

for Maximizing More Than Memory. American Educational
Research Journal 27, no2: 30121.
Markowitz, K, and EJensen. 1999. The Great Memory Book. San

Diego, Calif: The Brain Store.
Mastropieri, MA, and TEScruggs. 1998. Enhancing School
Success with Mnemonic Strategies. Intervention in School
and Clinic 33, no4: 20108.
Prosser, M, PWalker and RMillar. 1996. Differences in Students
Perceptions of Learning Physics. Physics Education 31, no1:
4348.
Roth, MW, and ARoychoudhury. 1994. Physics Students
Epistemologies and Views About Knowing and Learning.
Journal of Research in Science Teaching 31, no1: 530.
Salam, M, and RMillar. 2006. Upper High School Students
Understanding of Electromagnetism. International Journal
of Science Education 28, no5: 54366.
Taasoobshirazi, G, and JFarley. 2013. Construct Validation of
the Physics Metacognition Inventory. International Journal
of Science Education 35, no3: 44759.
Thomas, GP. 2012a. Metacognition in Science Education:
Past, Present and Future Considerations. In Second
International Handbook of Science Education, ed BJFraser,
KGTobin and CJMcRobbie, 13144. Dordrecht,
Netherlands: Springer.
. 2012b. The Metacognitive Science Teacher: A
Statement for Enhanced Teacher Cognition and Pedagogy.
In Contemporary Science Teaching Approaches: Promoting
Conceptual Understanding in Science, ed FOrnek and
IMSaleh, 2953. Charlotte, NC: Information Age.
. 2013. The Interview as a Metacognitive Experience
for Students: Implications for Practice in Research and
Teaching. Alberta Science Education Journal 43, no1: 411.
Hofer, B. 2001. Personal Epistemology Research: Implications

for Learning and Teaching. Educational Psychology Review
13, no4: 35383.
Willms, JD, SFriesen and PMilton. 2009. What Did You Do in

School Today? Transforming Classrooms Through Social,
Academic and Intellectual Engagement. (First National Report).
Toronto: Canadian Education Association.
Kolencik, P, and SHillwig. 2011. Encouraging Metacognition:

Supporting Learners Through Metacognitive Strategies. New
York: Lang.
Wolfe, P. 2001. Brain Matters: Translating Research into Classroom

Practice. Alexandria, Va: Association for Supervision and
Curriculum Development.
31
Three-Eyed Seeing? Considering

Indigenous Ecological Knowledge in
Culturally Complex Pedagogical Settings
Greg Lowan-Trudeau
Background
Canada is a culturally complex country composed
of Indigenous peoples and settler populations from
Europe and, increasingly, other parts of the world. In
general, butwith some important exceptions, the first
waves of Canadian colonizers and settlers were from
Europe, bringing with them predominantly Western
perspectives on science, ecology and land use (Saul
2008). For the first few centuries of postcontact
Canadian history, these Western perspectives interacted and often clashed with Indigenous understandings of the natural world, which were based on thousands of years of geographically rooted experience
(Cajete 1994). More recently, immigration from other
parts of the world has increased (Malenfant, Lebel and
Martel 2010). People arriving from non-European
cultures might have an understanding of Western science and philosophy, but they also often carry rich
ecological understandings linked to their home nations. Statistics Canada projects that immigration from
non-European countries will continue at a high rate
over the next several decades (Malenfant, Lebel and
Martel 2010).
Simultaneously, Indigenous history, perspectives
and contemporary issues are increasingly emphasized
in many provinces and territories as priority areas in
education for all students. For example, as Elliot (2011)
notes, the inclusion and consideration of Indigenous
perspectives is now part of Alberta science curricula.
Such trends have created and revealed rich and wonder
ful pedagogical complexity for Canadian educators and
students alike. As a Mtis science and environmental
educator born and raised in a relatively diverse urban
centre, I am particularly interested in the relationships
32
between different culturally based ecological knowledge systems.

Hence, this article reports on a recent pilot study
conducted in response to calls from participants in a
past study (Lowan-Trudeau 2012, 2014) for further
exploration of the complex experiences of newcomers
to Canada with learning about Indigenous ecological
knowledge in predominantly Western educational
contexts. In the first study, I interviewed Indigenous
and non-Indigenous Canadian science and environmental educators who were working to find common
ground between Western and Indigenous knowledge
and philosophies of nature. One of the challenges
identified by several participants was the difficulty of
reconciling two or more cultural viewpoints in the
complex settings common to many Canadian communities today. For example, many participants emphasized
the challenge of considering the cultures and experiences of students who have recently arrived in Canada,
while at the same time honouring local Indigenous
knowledge and wisdom and continuing to engage with
Western science perspectives. Several participants
suggested that it would be valuable to explore the
experiences of students new to Canada in order to
better understand their perspectives.
While there is extensive literature available pertaining to multicultural science and environmental education (eg, Agyeman 2003; Blanchet-Cohen and Reilly
2013; Roth 2008) and a growing body of work on Indigenous science and environmental education (eg,
Aikenhead and Michell 2011; Lowan-Trudeau 2012,
2014; Cajete 1994; Elliot 2011; Hogue 2012; Snively
and Corsiglia 2000; Swayze 2009), research that examines the complex interaction of these two areas is
limited. Terms such as two- or multiple-eyed seeing
(Hatcher, Bartlett, Marshall and Marshall 2009; Institute

for Integrative Science and Health 2012) have been
introduced to describe these complex contexts, but
they have not yet been explored in great detail together
in the Canadian context.
Toward Three-Eyed Seeing?

The concept of two-eyed seeing is now well established in science education circles. Developed by a team
of Mikmaq elders and science education researchers
at Cape Breton University, two-eyed seeing involves
viewing the world simultaneously through one Western
and one Indigenous eye to form a balanced and unified
whole (Hatcher, Bartlett, Marshall and Marshall 2009).
This concept has proved very useful and is adaptable
to a variety of cultural and geographical contexts engaging Western and Indigenous ecological knowledge.
The developers of two-eyed seeing allude to the
possibility of other culturally rooted perspectives being
considered in addition to Western and Indigenous
knowledge (Institute for Integrative Science and Health
2012); however, no empirical research to date has
explored the potential of three-, four- or five-eyed seeing in earnest.
The purpose of this study was to explore the formal
and informal educational experiences of first-generation immigrants to Canada with Indigenous ecological
knowledge and philosophy. Specifically, I was guided
by the following questions:
How do newcomers to Canada perceive Indigenous
ecological knowledge and philosophy?
How might formal and informal science and environmental educators better respond to such culturally complex educational contexts?
What are the broader societal implications of these
kinds of questions?
Methodological Mtissage
This study was further informed by methodological
mtissage (Lowan-Trudeau 2012), a calculated mix of
interpretive, narrative and Indigenous research approaches. Three pilot interviews employing a semistructured format were conducted with first-generation
adults who had experienced schooling in Canada.
Sample size was intentionally kept very small in order
to allow for in-depth consideration, interpretation and
presentation of participants narratives.
Participants and Recruitment

Despite broad circulation of a call for participants
to appropriate community and professional networks,
I did encounter initial difficulty with recruitment. During reflection and discussion with participants and
colleagues, it was proposed that this may have been
due to the relative paucity of adult individuals new to
Canada who have also had the opportunity to engage
with Indigenous ecological knowledge in meaningful
formal or informal educational contexts. In fact, this
foreshadowed one of the key findings of this study,
explained in further detail below.
Another surprising methodological development
was that, despite the recent increase of immigration
from non-European countries (Malenfant, Lebel and
Martel 2010), there were, of course, individuals from
European nations who were interested in participating
in this study. This was an important reminder. As presented below, this resulted in a participant group that
arguably mirrors historical Canadian immigration trends.
In order to provide further insight into the participants and their perspectives, brief biographies, in
chronological interview order, are presented below.
Kathy was born in Oxford, England. Early in childhood, her family left England by ocean liner for
Canada, eventually, in 1967, settling in Ottawa,
where she still lives today. Kathy noted that, as a
British immigrant, she found it fairly easy to transition into life and school in Canada. In her current
position, she manages an Aboriginal youth role
mentorship program that brings Aboriginal role
models into communities to facilitate sport, leadership, health and development initiatives.
Sophia (pseudonym) is currently a postdoctoral
researcher in the natural sciences. She was born in
central Europe and, similar to Kathy, came to
Canada by ocean liner in early childhood. Sophias
family initially settled in Ottawa, but soon relocated
to a small lakeside community in central Ontario.
Sophia revealed that, overall, she had a comfortable
childhood in a predominantly Anglo-Canadian community; however, she did experience some prejudice and feelings of exclusion related to her familys
central European cultural and linguistic roots.
Takwana is currently a graduate student in Ontario,
studying Indigenous knowledge in schools. She
came with her family from Zimbabwe to Toronto in
her mid-teens, a difficult time for such a transition.
33
Despite experiencing significant prejudice and

culture shock, Takwana successfully completed high
school and undergraduate studies in southern Ontario. She was also employed for several summers
as a literacy and community development worker
in several Aboriginal communities across northern
Ontario. This experience led Takwana to relocate
to a university in northern Ontario to complete her
graduate studies.
Interpretation
Interviews were transcribed, restoried (Creswell
2002) and individually and collectively coded for
themes (Lichtman 2012). Each interview was also
examined for epiphanic (Denzin 1989), illuminating
or aha! moments in which participants and/or
the researcher experienced exceptional clarity or
understanding.
In the spirit of reciprocity common to Indigenous
research methodologies (Kovach 2010), three in-depth
and individually intact narrative portraits (LawrenceLightfoot 2005) were subsequently produced and
presented to each participant.
In recognition of individual and community accountability (Kovach 2010), I am still in regular contact
with the participants and seek their approval and insight regarding any publicly presented or published
materials.
Key Findings
These three conversations produced an incredible
depth and diversity of insights, experiences and perspectives that are difficult to capture in a single journal
article. However, as the researcher, I recognize that it
is my responsibility to share my own impressions and
insights along with those of the participants in the
hope that others will find resonance and connection
with their own experiences and inquiries (Kovach
2010). This is a pilot study, and therefore just the beginning of a much deeper line of inquiry.
Notable findings from this study include the common lack of meaningful exposure to Indigenous knowledge and philosophy of any kind through formal
schooling, the importance of critical and experiential
approaches, and the potential for reimagining cultural
complexity as a strength rather than deficit for collaboratively addressing contemporary socioecological
issues through formal and informal education.
34
Limited Exposure to Indigenous

Knowledge
All three participants emphatically stated that they
had very little exposure to Indigenous ecological
knowledge and philosophy in their formal K12 education in Canada. However, Takwana reflected upon her
earlier experiences with school in Zimbabwe where
English and Shona (a local indigenous culture) language
and cultures were naturally integrated into school curricula and the day-to-day functioning of the school and
community. For example, she shared memories reminiscent of two-eyed seeing (Hatcher, Bartlett, Marshall
and Marshall 2009) when she noted that
In elementary school [in Zimbabwe], we [had] a
garden and sometimes wed do class projects
where wed be growing things We learned English and Shona and we would read Shakespeare, and Nigerian authors like Chinua Achebe...
I also remember when we were learning animals,
the class would be learning [about local] Shona [and
European] animals It wasnt that people were
trying, thats just how life was Having a grandmother come in and tell stories to the class first
thing in the morning that was just something
that was done.
Due to her early years surrounded by Shona culture
and language, Takwana reflected a three-eyed seeing
perspective when she suggested that it might be
easier for me to accept traditional ecological knowledge in Canada. However, perhaps not surprisingly,
upon arriving in Canada, Takwana did not experience
such a two-eyed seeing approach at all. She expressed
frustration with this and talked about searching well
into her undergraduate and early graduate studies for
mentors and opportunities to express, explore and
relate her own Shona culture to Indigenous peoples in
Canada.
Toward Sociocritical Experiential

Approaches
Takwanas emphasis on experiential, communitybased pedagogies in Zimbabwe aligns well with Indigenous perspectives here in Canada (Elliot 2011; Lowan
2009; Lowan-Trudeau 2014; Simpson 2002). All three
participants spoke of formative opportunities to spend
extended time in Indigenous communities in Canada
for work or postsecondary study.
For example, both Takwana and Kathy discussed

their overwhelming positive experiences working and
spending time on the land and in several Indigenous
communities for extended periods of time. Sophia
shared similar sentiments when she reflected upon her
experiences as a student researcher in the Canadian
North:
I went up north for my first field season and I had
a really, really profound time I stayed on an island
with two families. I was the only white person
it was my first chance to really spend time with
Indigenous people It was really amazing to be
immersed in this different culture My eyes
were just wide open and I was quite quiet and really
just observing everything.
All three participants also agreed that it was crucially important for non-Indigenous learners of all ages
engaging with Indigenous knowledge and peoples to
have strong mentors who are able to facilitate respectful and critical intercultural exchange and dialogue.
Identity Transformation
The participants also spoke about how these experiences transformed their own identities. For example,
Kathy revealed that she now sometimes finds it hard
to relate to her British relatives perceptions of Indigenous peoples in Canada. Sophia also described shifts
in her identity as she moved from respecting, but not
fully accepting, Indigenous knowledge during her
undergraduate studies, to over-adopting Inuit perspectives after her initial experiences in the North, to finally
finding a point of balance where Western and Indigenous knowledge and philosophies comfortably coexist.
Sophia reflected

Learning to respect these different ways of knowing

is really important and quite powerful. I cant
speak for Inuit I can only try and understand
whats been explained and what Ive read ... It can
be really awkward because then Ive interpreted
what Ive been told and Im trying to somehow
not play the devils advocate, but be sensitive to
different ways of knowing. I get kind of lost in all of
that and thats part of my identity. It makes
me kind of a messy person! Trying to navigate who
I am and where I come from and what I know from
a very scientific perspective, but then [Im also] really
informed by everything that I hear and learn
Every time I go up north things make more sense.
Takwana also described an epiphanic (Denzin 1989)

or aha! moment when she realized that her work as a
literacy and learning instructor in northern Indigenous
communities was perpetuating colonial processes similar
to those effected upon her own people in Zimbabwe:
I realized that it is a handout type of development, its not really from within. So I stopped doing
those things It stopped being about Zimbabwean
experiences and Canadian experiences. Its the
same. When I try to reconcile everything, I look at
the experiences in my country where I know how
to grow [and cultivate] crops because we learned
those things in geography [and at home] Everybody knows those things, everybody farms. And so,
I know how to take care of the land, but its very
political too because now we are forced to plant all of
these genetically modified crops that come in as
aid and that dont do well over time. We dont know
how to farm those things and then when [we] reject
[then it creates major international tension]
Youre trying to be self-determining and our politicians who reject this harmful aid are framed as
monsters depriving their people of foodwhen youre
just trying to feed yourself in a sustainable way.
Takwanas comments are reminiscent of Maori
scholar Graham Smiths (1997) discussions of internally
driven socioeconomic development as a key principle
of Kaupapa Maori, an influential Indigenous-centred
pedagogical and community development theory.
Takwanas insights also allude to one of the primary
societal implications of this study that is discussed below, the consideration of wicked problems that require interdisciplinary and intercultural collaboration.
Educational Implications
I believe that the primary implication of this pilot
study for educators is to reimagine cultural and pedagogical complexity as a possibility and strength, rather
than a challenge or deficit. While some science educators may remain reluctant to foster sociocritical and
interdisciplinary dialogue (Steele 2011; Chambers
2011) or perhaps feel that they do not have the curricular or logistical space to do so, there is increasing
curricular and administrative support for such approaches (Elliot 2011). Indeed, in other provinces such
as Ontario, interdisciplinary high school programs that
bring together the arts, humanities and sciences have
35
flourished (Henderson 2011). However, as Elliot notes,

educators teaching discrete courses can still do much
to foster effective learning through experiential,
community-connected, and sociocritical discussions
and experiences.
As all of the participants in this study emphasized,
facilitating sociocritical discussions and real-life experiences is a key element for successfully introducing
students of all backgrounds to Indigenous knowledge
and traditions in Western science settings (LowanTrudeau 2014; Simpson 2002; Elliot 2011). As Takwana
indicated, learners new to Canada and their peers will
benefit even more when provided with the opportunity
to reflect upon and contribute their own culturally
based understandings to critical discussions of Western, Indigenous and other knowledge systems. In this
manner, we may well move from collectively using only
one or two eyes, to a dynamic three- or multiple-eyed
seeing model.
Societal Implications
Several societal implications of this study warrant
consideration. The primary implication involves the
exploration of contemporary wicked problemssocioecological challenges, such as climate change, that
defy unidisciplinary solutions (Vink, Dewulf and Termeer 2013). Using three-eyed seeing as a model for
the consideration of wicked problems holds great
promise because it allows for the contributions of
multiple stakeholders drawing on Western and Indigenous understandings from around the globe.
As Kassam (2014) has noted, such an approach can
also facilitate inter-Indigenous exchange wherein Indigenous peoples from similar geographical and ecological
areas share insights and experiences with each other.
Another broad implication of this study is the importance of building strong intercultural alliances that
acknowledge and incorporate multiple cultural perspectives in authentic ways. All of the participants
supported such an approach in order to honour the
individual and contextual perspectives of both Indigenous peoples and newcomers to Canada in the spirit
of living well together on this land (Haluza-Delay,
DeMoor and Peet 2013). As Kathy suggested,
We are extremely fortunate to be living in a country
with such resources [So] how do we take care
of that, how do we nurture that so that weve
left something for the next generation?
36
Future Possibilities
Findings from this study will guide the development
of future research (Steele 2011) with community- and
school-based science and environmental education
programs that emphasize and integrate Indigenous
ecological knowledge and philosophy in culturally
diverse contexts. Further inquiry into the experiences
of youth and adult learners and educators engaging
with these complex situations will most certainly prove
insightful and further the conceptual development and
application of a three-eyed seeing model.
Acknowledgements: This study was made possible
in part through funding from the University of Northern
British Columbia.
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37
Geothermal Home Heating

Frank Weichman
Introduction
The Ideal Case
Some of my neighbours want to be eco-friendly and

have incorporated geothermal heating units in their
new homes. The principle behind such a system is to
extract heat energy from below the ground and, with
electrical input from the power lines, deposit this heat
energy into the house. Ideally the temperature under
the house would be above room temperature and all
such a system would need would be some tubing underground, a circulating liquid in the tubing and a pump
to distribute the heat to the radiators in the house.
This being Canada, in most of our country the temperature below ground is below the desired room
temperature year-round and therefore a device called
a heat pump must be used to raise the temperature of
the cool underground supply to a few degrees above
the desired room temperature before circulating it in
the house.
As a retired scientist with a remnant reservoir of
curiosity, I have acquired a strong interest in renewable
energy and energy efficiency, but I also worry about
hype versus progress. There are homebuilders advertising their capabilities in this field and there are think
tanks1 and other researchers2 who have made positive
recommendations for geothermal systems.
What I first want to explore with you is how a science-educated consumer can apply basic physics to
evaluate geothermal heating in our climate. This kind
of evaluation also makes it a reasonable subject for an
exploration in the classroom of physics and technology
at a sufficiently low level of mathematical complexity.
As a result of that exploration, we should be able to
decide under what circumstances geothermal heating
makes sense in our climate.
There are two quite different sources for geothermal heating. One is at locations with available heat
well above room temperature, say near hot springs.
Iceland is a good example. There, heat from below the
ground can be absorbed by a fluid and the hot fluid
can then be pumped through radiators to heat the
house as required.
The other source is an underground region, easily
accessible by digging or drilling, with cool stable temperatures in the range of 0to 15degrees. Appropriate
machinery can remove heat energy from the cool source,
upgrade it and then pump the upgraded heat energy
into radiators to warm the house. This second variant
of geothermal heating, called geoexchange by some,
ground source heat pump by others, is increasingly being
used in Canada, and is the subject of this exploration.
Because the heat source for geoexchange is below
the home comfort zone, any heat energy withdrawn
from this source must first be upgraded with a heat
pumpan inverse refrigeratorbefore being circulated in the home. The selling point for these systems
is that they can extract three to four units of free
thermal energy from the earth for every unit of electrical energy3 needed to drive the system. A technical
term, COP (coefficient of performance), is used. It is
defined as heat energy delivered on the hot side divided by (electrical) energy expended.
The quoted statement is scientifically valid, but, as
a skeptic, I felt the need for more precise numbers, the
economics and the ecological implications.
Join me, then, in an increasingly critical look at such
a system, starting with the most ideal conditions, followed by some necessary complications.
Pembina Institute fact sheet: Geoexchange Energy Under Foot.
Hanova, J, and HDowlatabadi. 2007. Strategic GHG Reduction Through the Use of Ground Source Heat Pump Technology. Environmental Research Letters2, 044001.
Pembina Institute, op cit.
38
The geothermal type of home heating system is

based on the heat engine. For our purposes, a heat
engine is a device that can extract energy in the form
of heat from a cold source, such as the interior of a
refrigerator, cool that source and deposit the extracted
heat energy into warmer surroundings (such as the
kitchen). Added in is the heat generated by the device
that extracts the heat. The device is called a heat pump
in these applications. Real heat pumps have losses,
equivalent to friction in mechanics.
For the ideal heat pump, removing an amount of
heat Qc from a reservoir kept at Tc and depositing the
upgraded heat Qhouse in the house at Th must follow the
thermodynamic relations shown below, where W is the
(electrical) work done to drive the system. The temperatures T in the expression must be expressed in the
Kelvin temperature scale.
Th Tc Qhouse Qc
W
=
=
Th
Qhouse
Qhouse
Under the most ideal condition, how much mechanical (or electrical) energy is needed to pump heat
from under the ground at, say, a constant 5C to a home
interior at 22C? Convert to Kelvin: 5C becomes 278K
and 22C becomes 295K and
Th Tc 295 278
=
= 0.0576
Th
295
If, as above, all we needed to do was to raise the
temperature of the circulating fluid from 5C to 22C,
then W/Qhouse = 0.0576. Its reciprocal, heat into the
house divided by external energy supplied, is the ideal
COP for that system, Qhouse/W = 17.4. With that ideal
result, the coefficient of performance, COP, of three to
four promised by the installers for a real system looks
eminently achievable.
Add Some Realism

The first correction is to realize that the temperature in the house in the winter would respond very
sluggishly if the output temperature of the heat pump
were set to the desired house temperature. Most radiators or hot air outlets in houses I have experienced
feel warm, or even hot. Say 40C. That would change
Th in the equation from 295K to 313K with the result
that Qhouse/W = 8.94. Even with that added realism, the
advertised COP is well within our calculated ideal
value.
As a next step, add in that an installed heat pump

cant be as efficient as an ideal heat engine. A fraction
of the electrical power input that drives the heat engine
is unavoidably going to be lost as heat. How do we
include these losses?
We will ignore the energy expended by a mechanical
pump that drives the heated liquid through the radiators to circulate the heated liquid in the house. That
energy would also be required in regions where the
heat comes straight from the local hot springs.
The approach I suggest is to imagine there is an
ideal heat pump operating between the same temperature reservoirs as before, from 5C to 40C, but that in
addition a fraction f of the (electrical) energy needed
to operate the heat pump system is directly converted
into heat in the house and stays there. The known
(required) heat in the house Qhouse will then consist of
Qideal, the heat energy provided by an ideal heat pump,
plus fW, the waste heat created by the machinery in
the house.
The ideal heat pump requires
W ideal Th Tc
=
Qideal
Th
The total energy expended to drive the system will
be W = Wideal + fW, while the heat gained by the house
is Qhouse = Qideal + fW.
With some algebraic manipulation we can solve for
Qhouse/W in terms of the assumed temperatures and the
fraction f that the heat pump loses to the interior
environment.
The result is
Qhouse = fW +
Th
(1 f )W
Th Tc
which reduces to
Qhouse =
Th fTc
W
Th Tc
Check: should f = 1 we get, as expected, Qhouse =

W; the entire electrical input gets converted to heat
without any COP gain, equivalent to using an electric
radiator. For f = 0, we get
Qhouse =
Th
W
Th Tc
as before. Qhouse, the heat gained in the house, is larger

than the energy W expended to put it there.
Even if we assume a 20per cent waste of energy at
the heat pump device, that is, f = 0.20, the system
39
predicts a COP of Qhouse/W = 7.26, and there still is no

need to break any obvious physical laws to obtain the
factor of three to four promised by the installers. In
fact, we can turn the problem around. Assuming a COP
of 4.0 and the temperatures used in the above calculations, we find that f = 0.62, a surprisingly high value
for the permissible waste at the device.
Do keep in mind that with the above setup we are
providing heat for the house at the output of the heat
pump. In addition, you need to provide energy to
circulate the heat through the house, just as you would
if you had hot springs next door.
Geothermal systems can provide a bonus in climates
different from Edmontons. Think of Toronto. Excessive
summer heat in the building can be deposited underground near the pipes during air-conditioning periods.
That heat is at least partially stored in the ground for
use in the following winter. No heat pump required,
just collect the warm liquid from the radiators and send
it down the pipes. The cooled liquid is brought back
up and is ready to collect more house heat, making a
start on the air conditioning needs.
So the thermodynamics for winter heating looks
OK, and there is enough wiggle room for inefficiency
to expect a feasible system. Capital cost and payback
time are a separate issue, but then the same can be
said for flowers in the garden or paintings on the wall.
However, should you have enough spare cash, does
the installation of a ground source heat exchange
system make sense in the battle to reduce greenhouse
gas emissions? The answer depends, much like real
estate prices, on location, location, location.
In much of Canada, electricity is generated by hydroelectric plants. Most of the greenhouse gases associated with these plants were already expended
during the building phase. The fuel, rain, is generated
from the sun evaporating water. Solar and wind power
generating plants use very little greenhouse gas to run
once they are built. Nuclear power plants take a lot of
energy to build, but the fuel, uranium, produces a lot
more energy than the energy needed to dig it up and
refine it. We Albertans, however, depend on coal-fired
power plants and their emissions, although renewable
energy is available for the eco-conscious consumer.4
The critical question is, Can we reduce greenhouse gas

emissions when we switch from natural gas heating to
a geothermal system powered by the electricity generated by a coal-fired power plant?
Coal-fired power plants do the opposite of heat
pumps. They use the difference in temperature between cooling water and the steam created by the
burning coal to create mechanical energy in the form
of rapidly rotating turbines. The turbines in turn convert the mechanical energy into electrical energy.
Modern coal-fired power stations convert roughly
40per cent of the heat energy from the burning coal
into electrical energy; 60per cent of the energy of the
burning coal is waste heat. It can be utilized for heating
purposes near the plant. That, by the way, is part of
modern practiceit is called cogeneration.
Let us look at what our geothermal system is doing.
Say we require 160units of heat energy in the house.
We get that thanks to a coefficient of performance that
could be as high as4.0. That would imply that we use
only 40units of electrical energy to operate our heat
pump to get four times as much heat, 160units, in the
house. But our coal plants need to burn 100units of
coal energy far out of town to create 40units of electrical energy for me to use at home. So we would still be
OK if our home heating uses coal: 100units of coal at
the plants for 40units at home to pump 160 units of
heat for the house. Looks positive.
Here, though, is the chemistry kicker. I dont know
about you, but I heat my house with natural gas. Why?
Burning natural gas produces less greenhouse gas
than coal for the same amount of energy.5 Specifically,
burning coal, essentially carbon plus impurities, releases 393kJ per mole, while natural gas, essentially
methane, releases 891kJ per mole.6 Both carbon and
methane have one carbon atom per molecule. Burning
equal numbers of carbon atoms, you get 891/397 = 2.25
more heat out of a methane molecule, CH4, as compared
to a carbon molecule, C, of coal. So, burning coal to
make electricity to run a heat pump makes no greenhouse gas sense in our part of the country. We might
have gained 160 to 100 in energy use, but that becomes
a 160 to 225 loss in greenhouse gas emissions.
So, why do it?
For example, Bullfrog Power.
Op cit.
Handbook of Chemistry and Physics, section on enthalpy of organic compounds.
40
Current Practice
The answer lies with economics, not physics, as you
will see below.
We do know that heat pump systems are being
installed, so allow me to present some of the current
practices as obtained from local company brochures
and conversations with installers.
In my hometown, Edmonton, it is considered sufficient to bury municipal water pipes at a depth of
1.8metres even though our winter temperatures can
drop to 40C. Where a new home is built with ground
source heat pumps, a common option is to lay flat
loops of polyethylene tubing in a 2.5-metres-deep
excavation. That depth is chosen as being a reasonable
compromise between achieving a year-round stable
temperature and a depth that can be easily accessed
by a backhoe. A more expensive option is to drill one
or more 75-metres-deep vertical holes to access an
even more stable soil temperature.7 Liquid is circulated
through the tubing to transport the heat energy between the ground and the heat pump. Locally the liquid
used is 20per cent methanol in water, just in case the
ground freezes.
My natural gas fuel bill tells me I am using a total
of 120GJ per year, which includes year-round cooking
and hot water. Say then that we ask our geothermal
system to deliver Qhouse = 60 GJ into my house from a
stable source below ground at Tc = 5C = 278K. Is
that feasible?
For the following estimates, accept the commercial
quote of a COP of 3.0. The machinery is asked to deliver
60GJ into the house, using 20GJ from the electric
utility and 40GJ from the soil surrounding the pipes.
Heat flows rather slowly through the ground. Is
there enough heat available near the buried underground pipes to pull out the 40GJ? As heat is removed,
the ground cools. If there is water, the water might
freeze. What volume do our geothermal pipes need to
access to keep the water in the soil from freezing?
Water has a high heat capacity and also a reasonably
good heat conductivity, which makes it a good starting
point for a guesstimation. How great a volume of storage capacity do we need if we will allow the water temperature to drop from 5C to 0C without forming ice?
For each 4.2J removed from one gram (= 1cc) of

water, we cool the water by 1C. Therefore, 21J can
be withdrawn for each cc of water at 5C without freezing the water. Total amount of water needed to withdraw the 40 GJ is 40 109/21 = 1.9 109 cc =
1.9 106 liters = 1.9 103 m3. Suppose now we draw
the heat from a layer one metre thick. What area do
we require? The same number, 1.9 103 m3/1 m =
1.9 103 m2, roughly 44 m by 44 m. If you are willing
to let all the water freeze, you can make use of the
latent heat of fusion at 333 J/gram. A total of 333 +
21 = 354 J/g is then available and we require a volume
of 113 m3, implying an area 10.6 m to a side, well within
the area of a city lot.
At some fortunate locations the cold reservoir is a
flowing stream continually bringing fresh water to the
coil of tubing, making the accessible volume very large.
I dont know about weather in the east, but we in
the prairies have serious problems with droughts and
dropping ground water levels. The heat capacity can
be expected to drop below the estimates made above
and as a consequence, as the winter progresses, the
temperature at the site of the buried pipes will decrease below the freezing point of water, which will
cause the coefficient of performance to drop significantly. How much?
I have looked up the performance data of the manufacturer Water Furnace,8 where the following (engineering) numbers originate for one of their many units. For
their model ND026 they specify that for an input water
temperature of 20F and an output air temperature of
85.8F their COP is 3.32. For an input water temperature of 40F and an output air temperature of 91.9F
their COP is 4.49. Convert from Fahrenheit to Kelvin
and youll find that the efficiency f is disappointing, at
0.677 and 0.758 respectively.
Worse than that, my informant9 in industry tells me
that at +5C input temperature the ground source heat
pump systems he installs are barely at the break-even
point.
$$ and
I believe that most of us are in favour of slowing
greenhouse gas emissions, particularly if we can
Private communication from Alex Lewoniuk at Geothermal Utilities in Edmonton.
Water Furnace 5 Series 500A11 Specification Catalog.
Alex Lewoniuk, Geothermal Utilities Ltd.
41
c onvince our neighbour to do so. I believe that for

Alberta the case for ground source heat pumps is dubious, mostly because our electricity is primarily generated from coal-fired power plants with inefficiencies
that barely match the COP advantage.
Also on the negative side is the fuel. As I have
stated, our electricity is generated from coal, whereas
most of us heat our homes with natural gas. Per joule
of heat output, natural gas produces less than half the
greenhouse gases of coal, further slanting us against
the heat pumps.
Short-term economics are also negative. It costs
more to install the geothermal systems and, strangely
enough, the fuel costs are higher here. According to
my January 2014 power bills, I paid $8.80 per GJ for
natural gas compared to $0.186 per kWh = $66.96 per
GJ for electricity; each includes taxes, fees and delivery
charges. In the summer the respective costs were $51
per GJ for natural gas and $0.237 per kWh = $85.32
per GJ for electricity.
Why then even bother, particularly in fossil-fuel-rich
Alberta? We have seen that the economics are against
us, and so are GHG emissions, but people do it anyway.
There are those who can afford it, who have a pride in
doing something new and who have been convinced
by the simplistic arguments about COP. More important
are the scientists, engineers and architects who know
that, whatever the short-term economics may be, in
the long run we have to reduce our fossil fuel use, and
we might as well start learning now.10 On the housing
front this means building homes that are well ventilated
but at the same time highly insulated and with high
internal heat capacity. Heating and cooling demand is
then minimized. Because both natural gas and electricity costs include a significant monthly connect charge,
it becomes economically sensible to forgo the gas
connection. My minimum natural gas bill, just to be
connected to the external gas pipes, is $50 per month.
That can pay for a fair chunk of electricity. For those
10
willing and able to pay, it has also become feasible for

homeowners to install photovoltaic electrical power
systems with an electrical output equal to the average
annual requirement of the home. We have several of
these net zero energy homes in and around Edmonton. At that point the argument about the switch from
direct natural gas to indirect coal burning vanishes.
With the help of the geothermal COP, net zero is easier
to achieve.
In the above I have argued the pros and cons of
ground source heat pumps for the individual homeowner. An early variant was to install large water tanks
in houses, such as in the Riverdale Net Zero home here
in town, for heat storage and heat recovery. I should
also mention that there are district applications of
these technologies, such as Drake Landing, in High
River, south of Calgary.
Finally, as more systems are built, the engineering
will improve. In years to come it would be hard to
imagine that COP values wont creep closer to ideal
values.
Conclusion
Our schools have been encouraged to take science
out of its ivory tower and to teach it together with
technology. I have found it interesting to be able to
explore with you the physics, current technology, economics and impact on greenhouse gas emissions of
currently available home heating systems, first as a
scientist looking at what might be possible in an ideal
world, followed by the wake-up calls when the data
from the manufacturers are included.
Please dont get me wrong. I am deeply disturbed
by the waste of natural resources all around me and
applaud all attempts to improve energy efficiency. I
ride a bicycle to work, use transit where available and
even grow a few veggies in the garden, but I do want
our choices to be based on facts, not on dreams.
CMHC (Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation) has supported the research projects.
42
Millsap and the Level of Civilization

Wytze Brouwer
You know, Brouwer, I think you could measure the

extent of a nations civilization by the number of different types of cheese it produces.
Millsap and I, with our wives, Helen and Geri, were
walking down the Champs Elysees in Paris, discussing
Europes fragile economic situation and its possible
effect on our pension, when Millsap came up with the
above comment.
Consider a nation that produces Brie, Camembert,
Chevre, Beaufort
Beaufort, I interrupted him, Thats not a cheese,
its a measure of wind velocity.
Dont be such an ignoramus, Brouwer, Beaufort is
a nice cheese made from cows milk and is very popular
in the French campagne.
But why should you measure a countrys level of
civilization by the number of types of cheeses it produces? Geri wanted to know.
Well, think of all the rich tradition a country must
have to have developed hundreds of types of cheese.
What better measure of civilization could there be?
You could suggest the most civilized country produces the most different kinds of wine, suggested
Helen, getting into the spirit of things.
Ill bet there is a close correlation between the
different types of cheese and different types of wine.
Did you notice that a different wine is suggested for
each of the different cheeses on the menu last night?
This type of discussion is typical of the high level
of intellectual speculation Millsap and I engage in, and
sometimesnot oftenour wives join us in them.
I suppose you chose cheese, Bert, said Helen,
because France produces the most different kinds of
cheese. You find Britain a lot duller so it probably produces fewer cheeses.
Let me just check this on my smart phone, I suggested. I bet theres a list somewhere telling you how
many different kinds of cheese each country produces
Yes, here it is Wow! Great Britain produces over
700different types of cheese and France produces only
400types. There goes your measure of civilization,

Millsap, unless you want to recognize Britain as the
most civilized country in the world.
Let me see that phone, Brouwer! Ah, France exports the most cheese in the world, and Britain is 10th
in cheese exports. Its how you export your culture
that determines how civilized the rest of the world
thinks you are.
Well, then, how about the US? It produces more
tons of cheese than France or Britain combined. How
about that for culture?
Youd better give up, Millsap, said Geri. Cheese
production probably is not related to level of civilization. Besides, its too biased towards the Western
nations, which have a history of cheese making. Besides, were near the Louvre, and can reflect on a different kind of culture.
So we left the cheese discussion until dinner time,
when we chose a nice Roquefort to go with dinner.
Millsap looked over the wine list and selected a Beaujolais, and asked the waiter to bring a bottle.
Mais non, non, non, monsieur, expostulated the
waiter, ze Beaujolais go with ze Brie or Camembert.
Monsieur wishes a nice Cabernet Sauvignon, nest-ce
pas?
So we followed the waiters recommendation and
enjoyed a great dinner. Afterwards we briefly harked
back to the mornings discussion. Millsap had continued to research into the prevalence of cheese consumption and had discovered, as he put it, an interesting fact.
It seems to be the case, said Millsap, that the
consumption of cheese increases with level of education. College graduates eat on the average more cheese
than high school dropouts. That does seem to lend
some support that cheese consumption is related to
level of civilization.
Oh, give it up, Bert. There must be much better
ways of determining whether or not a society is civilized. Helen had had enough of this semifacetious
pursuit of the significance of cheese.
43
We retired to the hotel garden where we could sit

around and ponder about what actually makes us civilized or not. We considered level of scientific achievement, with high marks for civilization given to Great
Britain, Germany, the United States and Russia, and
had to conclude that, given the history of the 20thcentury, level of scientific achievement seemed to be as
confusing a criterion as variety of cheeses. Even general
level of education, though somewhat appealing, did not
satisfy us as a sufficient criterion of level of civilisation.
There are a number of other measures of level of
civilization, such as gross domestic product, but we
could not find a measure we could agree on until Geri
suggested, Isnt there a philosopher who measures
the maturity of a civilization by how well a nation takes
care of its poor people?
Millsap responded, Actually, the major world religions all agree that the real worth of a civilization
44
does depend on how a nation takes care of its poor

and disadvantaged. By that measure, we have been
slipping the last 30 or so years since the difference in
income between the rich and the poor has increased
tremendously in the United States and Canada. I suppose the Scandinavian countries are most civilized by
that measure, and coincidentally the Scandinavian
countries also have higher educational levels and
lower crime rates than many societies in which there
are great gaps in income between the rich and the
poor.
So the day ended with at least a consensus that
material wealth, or cheese, was not a measure of civilization, but that nonmaterial goals provided a better
measure of how high a civilization could reach.
However, we still passed the rest of our holidays trying
out the best wines and cheeses that France had to
offer.
Millsap and His- or Herland

Wytze Brouwer
Say, Jenny, have you heard of a book called Hisland?

Chris Mitchell from Religious Studies told me to read
it. He says its about a world with only men in it. Apparently, with test tube babies and in-vitro fertilization
you dont need both sexes anymore. Chris told me that
without the sexual competition between men, society
became a lot more peaceful. Just imagine, a world
without war, apparently much less competitive, like a
new Garden of Eden.
Millsap, if you imagine that a world without
women would be more peaceful, you must be stark
raving mad. How can you even entertain the notion?
You as a psychologist should know that a world of
sexually frustrated men would destroy each other in a
blink of an eye.
Jenny Parsons could usually entertain Millsaps often unusual notions quite calmly and rationally, but
this was definitely too much. Her cheeks were flushed
and her hands were shaking. I laid my hand on her
shoulder and told Jenny that I agreed with her wholeheartedly. I think if you wanted peace on Earth, you
would have a better chance of achieving it if you
banned men and had only women running society.
However, I wasnt totally sure of what Millsap was
up to. Was he just throwing out a wild suggestion
to get Jenny angry? After all, I doubted very much
if there was a book called Hisland. I did possess a
copy of Herland, by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, which
makes a much more convincing case for a society run
by women.
Millsap, are you serious about the existence of a
book by the title Hisland? Isnt Chris Mitchell just pulling your leg?
Millsaps response to my question was to call the
waiter over to replenish our drinks. One Rosemary
Sunset for me, a light beer for Jenny and a pint of
dishwashing liquid for Brouwer.
Thatll be a shandy, in case youve forgotten, I
advised the waiter, but he just smiled understandingly
and got our drinks.
We were sitting around our usual table, despite the

repainting of the bar at the Faculty Club. It seemed
that the lively orange walls were being repainted a dull
grey, which already seemed to affect our mood.
Actually, Chris Mitchell is a very intelligent fellow.
He is an expert on comparative religions, continued
Millsap, after he had gulped half his Sunset.
And I suppose he is single, and probably frustrated? Jenny was still somewhat perturbed.
He is single and is the most well-adjusted person
I know. Next to him, Brouwer would look like a nervous
wreck.
I dont believe you, Millsap. You are hardly a good
judge of mental balance in yourself or in other people.
I think that Chris Mitchell is pulling your leg and is
probably referring to the book called Herland, by
Gilman.
Jenny was probably spot on. Herland is a lovely little
book, written exactly 100 years ago by Charlotte Perkins
Gilman. Herland is a society of women who have estab
lished a country free of war, and relatively free of excessive social competition between its inhabitants. Herland lies in a semitropical isolated valley, surrounded
by rugged snow-covered mountains, which keeps
Herland free from interference from the outside world.
Herland is discovered by three men who have
heard rumours that such a society exists, and decide
to explore the area to see if such an unlikely society
does actually exist. They dont expect to find it, but
the possibility is intriguing enough to make the effort
worthwhile. What would such a society be like? Would
the women be passive and dependent, and the society
stagnant without the technological and scientific input
of males? However, the explorers discover that the
women in Herland turn out to be strong, intelligent
and technically quite advanced and appeared to run a
very egalitarian and happy society. In view of the history of the 20thcentury, one reads the book almost
nostalgically, since such a peaceful world would have
been a great alternative to our current society, which
45
has lived through one of the most violent and maledominated centuries in history.
What do you think, Millsap? Was Chris pulling your
leg, or are you pulling ours?
I dont know, but I dont believe that a society run
by women would be more practical and happy than
our society, which has made great strides economically
in the last century. And look at all the medical innovations of the past 100years. In fact, you could make a
good case for the thesis that medical advances occur
mainly because of war. Societies need decision-makers
who know how to act quickly and strongly to stamp
out the evil in this world.
46
I shrugged my shoulders at Millsaps somewhat

harsh opinions. Millsaps heroes today appeared to be
the militant politicians who were ready to use military
might all over the world. His ideal person appeared to
be the Warrior, not the Scientist, or the craftsman of
many utopias or even the Mother, whose nurturing
serves as the model of social interaction in Gilmans
Herland.
I guess, Millsap, I ventured, I personally would
love to see a society that is based less on masculine,
more aggressive and competitive qualities (like our
western society) and somewhat more on the qualities
of compassion and cooperation that Gilman advocated.
Diversity Equity Human Rights Diversity Equity Human Rights
We are there for you!
Diversity Equity Human Rights Diversity Equity Human Rights
Specialist councils role in promoting

diversity, equity and human rights
Albertas rapidly changing demographics are creating an exciting cultural diversity that is
reflected in the provinces urban and rural classrooms. The new landscape of the school
provides an ideal context in which to teach students that strength lies in diversity. The
challenge that teachers face is to capitalize on the energy of todays intercultural classroom
mix to lay the groundwork for all students to succeed. To support teachers in their critical
roles as leaders in inclusive education, in 2000 the Alberta Teachers Association
www.teachers.ab.ca
established the Diversity, Equity and Human Rights Committee (DEHRC).
DEHRC aims to assist educators in their legal, professional and ethical responsibilities to
protect all students and to maintain safe, caring and inclusive learning environments. Topics
of focus for DEHRC include intercultural education, inclusive learning communities, gender
equity, UNESCO Associated Schools Project Network, sexual orientation and gender
variance.
PD-80-14 indd gr4
Here are some activities the DEHR committee undertakes:

Studying, advising and making recommendations on policies that reflect respect for
diversity, equity and human rights
Offering annual Inclusive Learning Communities Grants (up to $2,000) to support
activities that support inclusion
Producing Just in Time, an electronic newsletter that can be found at www.teachers
.ab.ca; Teaching in Alberta; Diversity, Equity and Human Rights.
Providing and creating print and web-based teacher resources
Creating a list of presenters on DEHR topics
Supporting the Association instructor workshops on diversity
Specialist councils are uniquely situated to learn about diversity issues directly from teachers
in the field who see how diversity issues play out in subject areas. Specialist council
members are encouraged to share the challenges they may be facing in terms of diversity in
their own classrooms and to incorporate these discussions into specialist council activities,
publications and conferences.
Diversity, equity and human rights affect the work of all members. What are you doing to
make a difference?
Further information about the work of the DEHR committee can be found on the
Associations website at www.teachers.ab.ca under Teaching in Alberta, Diversity, Equity
and Human Rights.
Alternatively, contact Andrea Berg, executive staff officer, Professional Development, at
andrea.berg@ata.ab.ca for more information.
47
Science Council Executive 2014/15

President
Chemistry
Past President
Biology
Ian Doktor
Bus 780-245-0253
iandoktor@hotmail.com
Rose Lapointe
Bus 780-639-0039
rose@ualberta.net
President-Elect
TBA
Secretary
Brenna Toblan
Bus 403-243-8880
brtoblan@cbe.ab.ca or
toblanbr@telus.net
Treasurer
Randy Proskiw
Bus 780-645-4491
randy@askaway.ab.ca
Conference Codirectors 2015

Carryl Bennett-Brown
Bus 780-459-5702
carryl.bennettbrown@ata23.org or
cbennett-brown@gsacrd.ab.ca
Ania Ossowska
Bus 780-425-6753
anialyda.ossowska@gmail.com
Alicia Taylor
Bus 780-922-0375
sweetleesh1@yahoo.com
DIRECTORS
Division III
Greg Wondga
Bus 780-473-4560
greg.wondga@epsb.ca
Rekha Dhawan
Bus 403-230-4743
rddhawan@yahoo.com
Postsecondary Representative
Brad Pavelich
pavelich@mhc.ab.ca
Alberta Education Liaison
Danika Richard
Bus 780-798-3840
danika.richard@nlsd.ab.ca
Wes Irwin
Bus 780-422-2928
wes.irwin@gov.ab.ca or
wirwin@telusplanet.net
PhysicsDivision IV)
PEC Liaison
Cliff Sosnowski
Bus 780-435-3964
sosnowskic@ecsd.net
ScienceDivision IV
Leon Lau
Bus 403-817-3400
lhlau@cbe.ab.ca or
leon.lau@gmail.com
Sean Brown
Bus 780-458-6101
sean.brown@teachers.ab.ca or
sbrown@gsacrd.ab.ca
ATA Staff Advisor
Marv Hackman
Bus 780-447-9488 or
1-800-232-7208
marvin.hackman@ata.ab.ca
ScienceElementary
Audrey Pavelich
Bus 403-527-2257
audrey.pavelich@sd76.ab.ca or
apavelich@shaw.ca
Journal Editor
Wytze Brouwer
Bus 780-492-1074
wytze.brouwer@ualberta.ca
Newsletter Editor
Trinity Ayres
Bus 403-500-2850
trinity.ayres@cssd.ab.ca or
ayres@shaw.ca
Technology Director
Deepali Medhekar
Mrs.Medhekar@gmail.com
REGIONAL COUNCILS
Calgary Junior High
Joy Bader
Bus 403-243-8880
jobader@cbe.ab.ca
Edmonton Biology
Morrie L Smith
Bus 780-476-4646
morrie.smith@epsb.ca
Edmonton Chemistry
Dan Leskiw
Bus 780-408-9000
dan.leskiw@epsb.ca
Edmonton Physics
Vlad Pasek
Bus 780-476-6251
pasekv@ecsd.net
ISSN0701-1024

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ASEJ, Volume 44, Number 1, August 2015

ASEJ, Volume 44, Number 1, August 2015

From the Editor

ASEJ, Volume 44, Number 1, August 2015

Elite German Chemists in World WarI:

A man belongs to the world in times of peace, but to his

more than any other innovation, it was the premiere

Science and the State

This article outlines the wartime contributions of three

As a long-time military buff and veteran chemistry

Figure 1. Fritz Haber (pointing) directs his gas-pioneer

ASEJ, Volume 44, Number 1, August 2015

The flag-waving and nationalistic Sturm und Drang

nonetheless rely equally on modern chemistry for their

ASEJ, Volume 44, Number 1, August 2015

Fritz Haber: They Sow the Wind, and

It could easily be argued that but for the Haber-Bosch

ASEJ, Volume 44, Number 1, August 2015

Innovation in weaponry arose not simply from the

Haber was not the first scientist to be directed

ASEJ, Volume 44, Number 1, August 2015

Habers story as one of the most tragic and ironic cases

Otto Hahn: My LifeMy Country,

eheimrat Emil Fischer (Nobel Prize for the chemistry

ASEJ, Volume 44, Number 1, August 2015

He was already away in the Champagne sector, scouting

designed to eat through conventional rubber masks

ASEJ, Volume 44, Number 1, August 2015

(the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry)

Otto Warburg: Rejoice, For my son

ASEJ, Volume 44, Number 1, August 2015

That there are so many others who perished in that

Figure 3. Is a picture worth a thousand verses?

Rothstein, L. 1995. The Transfermium Wars. Bulletin of the

Now I am become Deaththe destroyer of worlds.

Oppenheimers famous quote refers to the following

Trumpener, U. 1975. The Road to Ypres: The Beginnings of

A shameless reference to the John Lennon song of the same name.

ASEJ, Volume 44, Number 1, August 2015

The American Chemical Warfare Service in

ASEJ, Volume 44, Number 1, August 2015

into the experience of several elite German chemists

I argue that this prior historical episode was a first

America Adjusts to War

Fertilizer plants erect their own sulfuric-acid works

circumstances these are the cohorts from which

America Enters the Chemists

end. The CWS also established an experimental testing

ASEJ, Volume 44, Number 1, August 2015

After initial development and testing at CUA and

Aftermath of the Chemists War

combat arms of the CWS attached to the American

ASEJ, Volume 44, Number 1, August 2015

Starting in 1919, numerous articles began to appear

Similar reactionary and pacifist sentiments were

Thus began a long public campaign linking chemical

A revision of the National Defense Act in 1920 made

ASEJ, Volume 44, Number 1, August 2015

Fries published an article in Current History, amid the

(1921) lauds the remarkable results of the World War

From Dreaded Weapon to

pest control, especially to agricultural pesticides and

ASEJ, Volume 44, Number 1, August 2015