My son, Alexander, is completing his high school career by taking chemistry and physics.

Which makes him 50 percent smarter than I am.

Or maybe its 100 percent.

Im equally lost among the precepts of mathematics as I am fumbling around in convoluted formulas of chemistry and the insane concepts of physics.

This is why I labored through only chemistry in high school, achieving, by way of the dogged determination that is the clueless students only advantage, a flaccid C.

(I was pretty deft with a Bunsen burner, as well. And one time I tried to make nitroglycerine, a failed effort that seemed to amuse the teacher. Probably because I didnt hurt anyone.)

I have few distinct memories from chemistry class, but one retains that crystalline quality which our brains, in some cruel twist of human evolution, reserve for our most embarrassing episodes.

(Actually only part of the memory is still vivid; I have no recollection at all of the details of the problem we were supposed to solve.)

The occasion was a particularly rare one: An experiment that seemed to me, if not logical, at least understandable.

I volunteered to walk up to the blackboard (it was in fact green, but, as with the black kind, you wrote on it with chalk) and demonstrate the equation.

See the original post:
Like father (not) like son: Showed up in chemistry class