Featured Memory
You Don’t Need Equations When You Know the Subject That Well.
I attended a lecture by Henry Eyring given at Washington State College in Pullman, WA on the subject of chemical kinetics. He was sponsored by the American Chemical Society, and the lecture was for faculty and grad students at WSC and the University of Idaho. I was surprised by his presentation in that he didn’t use the chalkboard and lots of equations. Instead he had a flannel cloth over the chalkboard on which he moved pink elephants and grey clouds to describe how chemicals reacted with each other. It reminded me of Junior Sunday School. I was amazed at how easy it was to understand the rather complex subject. When I commented on the unusual method of presentation to a fellow faculty member, he replied, “You don’t need equations when you know the subject that well.”