Изящная непринужденность
В одном из выпусков журанала Chemistry World была опубликована прекрасная статья, отрывок из которой я решил перевести. Из-за моей поспешности перевод был потерян, поэтому привожу ниже оригинал:
In his Book of the Courtier, the Renaissance writer Baldassarre Castiglione, whose wonderful portrait by Rafael hangs in the National Gallery in London, UK, wrote that the perfect gentleman should 'affect in all thing sprezzatura' - artful effortlessness.
Chemists practice such deceptions all the time. Open any textbook and you see concise and elegant equations by which one molecule is transformed to another. A process of mind-numbing complexity is reduced to two symbols connected by an arrow. Actual experiments provide salutary reality checks. Bitter experience teaches us that hubris lurks behind every equation and recipe. Reproducing a reaction is fraught with peril - the rate of addition, the efficiency of mixing, the temperature, the vacuum - all can make a difference. And that is before we even dare change the scale.
But such things are seldom mentioned to students. These skeletons we keep in our closets are somehow thought of as being problems for engineers to solve. But like it or not, solve them we must...
Chemistry World, 2010, http://www.rsc.org/chemistryworld/Issues/2010/July/MortonFlask.asp
In his Book of the Courtier, the Renaissance writer Baldassarre Castiglione, whose wonderful portrait by Rafael hangs in the National Gallery in London, UK, wrote that the perfect gentleman should 'affect in all thing sprezzatura' - artful effortlessness.
Chemists practice such deceptions all the time. Open any textbook and you see concise and elegant equations by which one molecule is transformed to another. A process of mind-numbing complexity is reduced to two symbols connected by an arrow. Actual experiments provide salutary reality checks. Bitter experience teaches us that hubris lurks behind every equation and recipe. Reproducing a reaction is fraught with peril - the rate of addition, the efficiency of mixing, the temperature, the vacuum - all can make a difference. And that is before we even dare change the scale.
But such things are seldom mentioned to students. These skeletons we keep in our closets are somehow thought of as being problems for engineers to solve. But like it or not, solve them we must...
Chemistry World, 2010, http://www.rsc.org/chemistryworld/Issues/2010/July/MortonFlask.asp