——By Andrew Derham (石室中学剑桥国际高中课程中心学术校长)
"一个高中生三年会花600个小时学习化学，这还不包括完成老师布置的家庭作业。"那为什么我们还要学习化学，学习化学理论呢？学术校长Andrew Derham道出了学习化学的五大理由，为你全方位揭开化学的魅力！
Why do we study chemistry? If students study the subject for all three years at our Centre they will spend 600 hours learning about chemistry. And that doesn't include homework!
Why bother? Why use up our time learning about electrons, the Haber Process, entropy, titrations, acids and bases, atoms and ions, moles and molecules, Dmitri Ivanovich Mendeleev …?
There are many reasons, and here are a few:
"It's fun (of course!)
"We need chemists. Think how much chemistry has improved our lives. Without chemistry there would be no fuels and detergents, no plastics and paints, no metals or alloys or batteries or even party balloons! Medicines and sanitation have kept people alive who would never have survived if they had been born a few decades earlier. And the quality of our lives has improved, too. Think of our ancestors of a few hundred years ago, itching and scratching and smelling and starving. It's chemistry which has saved us from living like that.
"Sometimes we need to think like scientists, and chemistry teaches us to do this. We need to observe, and gather evidence, interpret it and make decisions based on what we find out. This is a very important set of skills in many areas of life and it is why people who want to study subjects which have nothing to do with science, such as law, find it easier to get into university if they have good grades in science subjects.
"Planners and other citizens need to know about chemistry to help them decide about things which involve the subject. For example, how could we make a good choice about where to build a plant to make sulphuric acid if we knew nothing about it?
"We are curious! We just want to know things. Chemistry teaches us how matter is put together and how it behaves, even in living things like us. How dull life would be if we didn't know about such things.
So, chemistry is interesting, fun and extremely important. That's why we spend so long in the classroom studying it. I actually would love it if we spent even more!