Why do Stanford math professors still use chalk? (2021)
stanforddaily.com23 points by bookofjoe 16 hours ago
23 points by bookofjoe 16 hours ago
This discussion reminded me of my best Diff Eq prof. He would start each lecture by putting a small clock on his podium, and starting at the precise time listed for the start of the lecture. Then he would leap into action, chalk dust flying around him as he explained the subject of the day. He would often go through more than six full-size chalkboards, having a student erase a few chalkboards behind him so he could return to use the first chalkboard when he ran out of room on the sixth one. Then at the precise time scheduled for the end of the lecture, he would take the clock off the podium and leave the room.
You could often see him walking around campus, covered in a fine white dust, looking like a ghost.
It's been 30 years, and I couldn't remember his name, but man do I remember his lectures.
Update: after typing this, I searched for him, and unfortunately found him almost immediately. He just passed away, and there was a memorial to him on the front page of his math department: https://www.math.fsu.edu/DepartmentNews/Articles/Fac_Nolder....
I note this line from the memorial: His students marveled at his ability to draw a perfect circle on the blackboard with a single stroke.
Here's to you, Dr. Nolder!
It's like writing on paper vs writing on a digital tablet. The difference in tactile feedback leads to better handwriting, at least for me.
I'm curious about the phenomenon they mentioned of "circles being smaller with markers". I definitely noticed that when teaching my overall font size decreased on markers vs. chalk, even when using the skinny chalks. But the effective tip size even with small chalk is larger than that of whiteboard markers. So I wonder if we had big ass whiteboards with big ass tips on the markers if the writing style would be more similar. Or if it's more a function of the resistance you get with chalk+chalkboard. Could we make a whiteboard+marker that had more resistance? Like some hall effect or something. Sounds too complex relative to just using chalkboards.
That being said, a downside I didn't see mentioned was chalk dust. I have asthma but still prefer chalk, but I did not appreciate having to pound the dust out of the erasers when I was in grade school. I wonder if they could make the chalk magnetic and have magnetic trap at the bottom or something. But again too complicated.
Any
> Could we make a whiteboard+marker that had more resistance? Like some hall effect or something. Sounds too complex relative to just using chalkboards.
I think that whiteboard vs chalkboard is just personal preference/cultural, and that the explanations in the article are just trying to justify it (which is totally fair IMHO). So I don't think that there's any need to "fix" that problem with whiteboards.
My hand writing is poor and my handwriting with a stylus is worse but screen annotations on zoom have been life changing for me at work. I don’t really care that I cannot write legibly. Quick iteration on diagrams is king.
I did not appreciate having to pound the dust out of the erasers when I was in grade school.
I wonder if they could make the chalk magnetic and have magnetic trap at the bottom or
something. But again too complicated.
The german way seems to be a wet sponge followed by a squeegee to wipe off excess water. Here's a masterclass from Frederic Schuller (and a rigorous advanced course in quantum mechanics)
In my school, the board was erased many times throughout the day with erasers, and then with water only at the end of the day so it would be "pristine" the next morning.
If you wipe with a sponge, you can't really go on to use it immediately can you? Like you can't write well on a moist chalkboard?
I had a great calculus prof who would wash all the chalkboards halfway through our (3-hour) class, and dismiss all the students for a 10-minute break while the boards dried.
That sounds way better
Wait, you don't use water?! As a German I kind of thought that's normal everywhere, dip the sponge into water, clean the blackboard. Slamming dusty sponges together sounds.. very dusty indeed.
Well, I only ever cleaned them fully in grade school. In undergrad I TA'ed on whiteboard, in grad school it was unfortunately all whiteboards. Except for the rare literal "chalk talk" mini-conferences I was fortunate to attend, where I just erased what I had at the end, no full cleaning. So, I guess I just never "saw how the sausage was made" and implicitly assumed the worst.
Or my grade school never knew better, which is quite possible given its size/location. Or they thought it was funny to make kids deal with all the dust?
Chalk, the Emacs of boards.
I tried extending this analogy to dry erase boards, and all I could come up with was MS Paint
I enjoy using chalkboards so much more than whiteboards. Other than the chalk dust, I just can't understand how anyone would prefer whiteboards over chalkboards.
Yeah, it's the chalk dust. It's that simple.
Also different colors on whiteboards is occasionally helpful for clarity, e.g. color-coding an equation to a line in a graph. But that's pretty minor.
we had colored chalk for that purpose in my school for math at least
There is much less selection in colors for chalk. And many of them show very poorly on chalkboards. Hagoromo's green for example, is almost impossible to make out on our chalkboards.
I had some teachers allergic to chalk. They sent students to pound the dusters on the balcony.
>Other than the chalk dust,
You know, the worst part that makes them unbearable and a literal health hazard to use.