I read a fascinating article by Phillip Ball in Scientific American entitled, 10 Unsolved Mysteries.  He writes about the 10 unsolved mysteries in chemistry and biochemistry–the sciences of atoms and molecules.  As a chemistry and biology teacher, I was fascinated by his approach of challenging us to think about scientific concepts from the perspective of unsolved mysteries.  Could we excite the imagination of our students by thinking about science as an exploration of unsolved mysteries?  Popular culture, CSI-type programs, have captured the imagination and attention of people over the past ten years.  Why not approach science education in a similar way?

I know many of my colleagues will say that students need a great deal of content knowledge before they can actually think creatively about the “unsolved mysteries” of science.  Maybe that’s the case, but I also wonder if our imagination is constrained by our past experiences in the classroom.  Do we think of the science classroom in too limited a way?  Why not explore new ways to approaching our instruction or new ways of turning students on to learning science?  Project-based learning, in tandem with the “unsolved mysteries” approach, might be a way to think about teaching science in creative and interesting ways.

Here are Ball’s 10 unsolved mysteries in chemistry and biochemistry: