#Paul wrote:
charles wrote:
Why should someone be marked down in Physics, for poor spelling,
when they are showing an excellent grasp of the subject?
In chemisty? Is ita sulphate or a sulphide?

I wouldn't mark down for bad spelling per se, but I do mark down for
lack of clarity, illegibility, or ambiguity (e.g. taking your example,
what should someone think the miselpting "sulphade" was?). I also
emphasise to students the need to make what they produce easy to
understand, so as to reduce the likelihood of misunderstanding by
either markers, or some putative future colleague or employer.

Generally, misspellings are not a significant issue; more interesting
is the students who can solve problems correctly ... whilst also
being more or less incapable of explaining how or why they managed
to do so :-)

#Paul

My experience is, you need people who have an innate
skill or interest in a topic.

In a chemist, you want someone who is three steps
ahead of you, when something is about to blow.

I had one guy in high school, who had that skill set.
He was a little too good as a chemist. But not someone
you'd hire, if there was a "background check" :-)
He lost his lab privileges one day, after blowing
the door off the fume hood. I have no idea what he
was thinking, because as an explosives expert, he had
plenty of other locales for that work. (Like any red-blooded
chemist, he was standing to the side of the hood, while
working on the explosive, so the door didn't hit him. A
book-learned student would have got the door right
in the face. He demonstrated for me, how he was
standing when it went off, and reaching around the
fume hood frame to do the work.)

He was also just a wee bit mentally unbalanced. The last
we heard of him, he was an alcoholic in university.
And fortunately, not my university :-) It's OK to be
an alcoholic in university, just not an explosives expert
with an alcohol problem.

One problem is, he could council others in the arts. For
one individual, that individual managed to burn his own house
down. For a second individual, that individual blew his
two hands off (while attempting to make Tovex). (I know the
story to be true, because my sister dated the guy with
no hands. Just the one date.)

Book-learned individuals, a great many graduate, not many
are all that "useful" in a pinch. He was the kind of
person, you could say "I have a pound of salt peter and
a box of crackers, what can I make ?". And he could tell you.
The book-learned individual would still be Googling "crackers"
when you checked back.

Paul