steM: Let’s Not Forget about Math!
From Richard C. Larson
STEM is my favorite four-letter word these days! As we know, STEM = Science, Technology, Engineering and Math. But when you look at typical photographs showing students “doing STEM” you might think it is written sTem or sTEm. That is, you see Technology or Technology-&-Engineering emphasized. It’s fine to think of students designing and building things. But let’s not forget the ‘S’ and the ‘M’ in STEM. Today I’d like to talk about the ‘M’, namely Math.

Here again there is often a misperception. And that is that Math is drill, drill, drill, to develop computational skill, skill, skill. Examples: Given the two legs of a right triangle, find the length of the hypotenuse. Or find the two roots of this quadratic equation. But deep steM knowledge is much more than that.

Consider knowing orders of magnitude. In engineering practice or as an operating scientist, knowing orders of magnitude – in your ‘soul’ – is critical. Yet today’s young people were born with calculators and computers all around them. Long division or multiplication is seen as comparable to the abacus. We often see a student submit homework or a report with a decimal point 3 places off, and he/she has no idea of this error. The intuition of order of magnitude has vanished along with the slide-rule. Perhaps it’s analogous to the growing inability of many to read maps, as GPS has solved that problem!

Here’s an order of magnitude, posted as a Tweet by General Electric on July 23: “There are more atoms in a glass of water than glasses of water in the ocean.” Or, in one of our BLOSSOMS lessons, we discuss Moore’s Law, operating since 1958 or so, where it is said that the power of a fixed area computer chip doubles roughly every two years. In the video lesson, the student teacher holds up an iPhone and shows pictures of the 1970’s full-room multi-ton Cray super computer. As a result of Moore’s Law, the iPhone in your hand has the computational ability of three Cray super computers. The power of exponentials!

Where do we teach orders of magnitude in our alleged STEM-focused classes? I hope we do, but evidence suggests that we do not. So, I offer a challenge to the reader. I will offer a nice prize ($50 value) to the best answer. Here’s the problem: You bought a new car five years ago. The dealer supplied it with a full tank of gas. Question: Estimate the number of molecules of that original full tank of gas that are present in your gas tank today. Make all assumptions explicit. And also assume that your visits to the gas station are not robotic, that is, they are not deterministic. There has to be some variability in when you refill. Have fun! Good luck. I look forward to your fully completed answer.

Richard Larson is the Mitsui Professor of Engineering Systems at MIT. He is also the Director of MIT LINC and the Principal Investigator of MIT BLOSSOMS.

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