Musings of an Old Chemist

A Chemist's Perspective on the Habits and Skills STEM Students Need For Success

Tag: personal growth

  • Personal Growth as a Series of Energy Transformations

    Personal Growth as a Series of Energy Transformations

    The Law of Conservation of Energy

    Have you ever felt completely drained after a project, even a successful one? Or, conversely, felt energized and alive after tackling a difficult challenge? The reason for this might be found in a fundamental law of the universe: the conservation of energy.

    The law of conservation of energy states that energy cannot be created or destroyed; it can only be transformed from one form to another. The principle of conservation of energy absolutely applies to the process of your personal growth. You can’t get energy out without putting energy in.

    In our chemical reaction analogy for personal growth, this principle is foundational. It means that the personal energy you have is a finite resource that must be accounted for. It can’t simply disappear.

    We can view our personal growth as a series of energy transformations. In this model, you are the most precious resource you have—your personal energy. Personal growth requires an investment of personal energy—your time, effort, focus, and emotional commitment—to initiate and sustain a change. The outcome you get is a direct result of this transformation.

    The key to living the life you desire isn’t about finding more energy; it’s about choosing where to invest the energy you have.

    Exothermic Personal Growth

    An exothermic reaction is one that releases more energy than it takes to get started. Think of a campfire: you invest a small amount of energy to light a match, but the fire then releases a much greater amount of heat and light. 

    Exothermic personal growth is a process that provides a net gain. In a highly efficient “reaction,” your invested energy is transformed into a net gain of new, positive energy. This is the ideal. It’s a process where your small, intentional investment of personal energy leads to a large and rewarding release of positive energy. 

    For example, the challenging work of learning a new skill that brings you joy, taking on a difficult but meaningful project, having a deep, honest conversation with your friend. These actions require effort, but the feeling of accomplishment, connection, and confidence you get in return is a powerful surplus. The emotional reward is far greater than the initial effort.

    Endothermic Personal Growth 

    An endothermic reaction is one that absorbs energy from its surroundings. Think of a chemical cold pack: it needs to absorb energy from the environment to become cold. The process leaves the surroundings with less energy. In a draining “reaction,” your energy is transformed into by-products like stress, frustration, and burnout. You put in a great amount of personal energy, but because the process is inefficient or misaligned with your goals, you are left feeling drained and with a net loss of energy.

    It’s when you are constantly investing a large amount of personal energy into a process or relationship, with very little emotional or mental energy being returned. This could be staying in a job that makes you miserable for too long, trying to earn the approval of someone who constantly criticizes you, or pursuing a goal out of obligation, not because you’re passionate about it. These are processes that leave you feeling drained. The energy you invest is not returned to you, or the products of the “reaction” aren’t worth the cost.

    Key Understanding

    In this analogy, you are the “chemist” of your own life. You can’t create more energy, but you can choose where to direct the energy you have. Your goal is to design a life filled with reactions where a small investment of intentional effort yields a significant release of personal energy, making the entire growth process both powerful and sustainable. To identify and pursue the exothermic reactions that fill you up and provide momentum for the next challenge. Just as importantly, you must recognize and minimize the endothermic reactions that drain your most precious resource: your personal energy.

    Personal Commentary: The Importance of Self-awareness

    I’m a perfect example of how the benefits of exothermic personal growth, such as accomplishment and confidence, can lead to negative outcomes. For much of my life, I have made the most of my God-given intelligence and my ability to grasp and explain complex concepts, gaining recognition and self-confidence. However, as this recognition grew, my self-confidence transformed into arrogance. I stopped recognizing and acknowledging my weaknesses, believing my way the the best or only way and that I no longer needed others’ help. This led me to forge ahead alone, alienating people and ultimately causing my failure. The very processes that were initially energizing became draining, leading to frustration, resentment, and the abandonment of those career paths.

    At the time, I blamed others for my setbacks. Now, with age, wisdom, and a new perspective, I realize I was my own worst enemy. This highlights the critical importance of self-awareness in navigating our lives. It shapes our perspective, ensuring we neither waste our energy nor allow positive, personal growth to become a long-term detriment. Self-awareness is the key to developing our action plan, the specific steps and habits we need to follow, the “procedure” in our chemical reaction analogy of personal growth. 

  • Weekly Quotation: September 10, 2025: Humility and Gratitude

    Weekly Quotation: September 10, 2025: Humility and Gratitude

    For your consideration:

    Just knowing you don’t have the answers is a recipe for humility, openness, acceptance, forgiveness, and an eagerness to learn – and those are all good things.

     – Dick Van Dyke

    Learning to be humble, to express gratitude for what you have been given, opportunities you have been offered, and for everyone who supports you, emotionally and monetarily, is essential for our journey of personal growth. It requires self-awareness, recognizing what we do not know or understand, admitting our faults and weaknesses, as well as identifying our strengths. Waking up each day seeking to be a better person than you were the day before. And, when you make mistakes, be willing to take ownership of them, seeking forgiveness where needed, and taking the lessons you learned from them to heart, striving not to repeat the same mistakes.

  • The Chemistry of Personal Growth: A Campfire Analogy

    The Chemistry of Personal Growth: A Campfire Analogy

    From my perspective, as a chemist, the process of personal growth is not all that different from the processes of a chemical reaction. And to understand personal growth through the analogy of a chemical reaction, it’s helpful to first examine the basic steps and components of a chemical reaction. I hope to simplify the steps in chemical reactions by focusing on energy: the energy required to initiate and sustain the reaction, and the energy released as products. This focus on energy is crucial because when we explore personal growth, we’ll similarly concentrate on the energy we invest in our own development.

    In its simplest form, a chemical reaction may be written as follows:

    Reactants  → (Reaction mechanism or process) →  Products

    For this discussion, I will use the example of a combustion reaction. Most of us should be familiar with building a campfire. Whether it is in our backyard firepit, or we are enjoying s’mores over a campfire. We can break down the individual components of this reaction as follows:

    The Reactants: These are the starting materials. When we build a campfire, our reactants are newspaper, twigs, branches, or logs, and the presence of oxygen. You may not consider oxygen when you think of your starting materials, but it is the necessary component in almost all types of combustion reactions.

    The Reaction Mechanism: It is the burning of the individual components – newspaper, twigs, larger branches, and logs, and the ignition pattern usually occurs in that order.

    The Products: Our campfire produces ashes, heat, light, carbon dioxide (CO2), and water vapor (H2O).

    Factors that affect the rate of the reaction, i.e., how fast our fire burns.

    The concentration of the reactants. Higher concentrations generally lead to faster reactions – for a campfire, the more newspaper and twigs you have, the faster the fire starts producing heat and light. However it is important to take note of the fact the rate of reaction for the newspaper and the twigs is much faster than that of the branches and logs. While the burning of the newspaper, for example, does produce some heat and light, it does not last very long. Its purpose is to be an intermediate step in the reaction process, solely to light the twigs and perhaps small branches. It would be very difficult to make s’mores on a fire whose only fuel was wads of newspaper.

    The activation energy associated with the reaction. This is the initial energy required to initiate a reaction. Think of it like the energy needed to start a snowball rolling downhill. In our example, the fuel, newspaper and wood, even in the presence of oxygen, won’t spontaneously combust. It needs an initial input of energy to start the reaction. This is the activation energy. You provide this energy by lighting a match or using a lighter. The heat from the match is what breaks the initial chemical bonds in a small amount of paper or wood, allowing the combustion process to begin.

    Sorry, spontaneous combustion only exists in comic books, the X-Files, and Harry Potter novels. 

    The presence of a catalyst. A catalyst lowers the activation energy, which speeds up the reaction. By definition, and this is an important qualification, catalysts are not consumed in a reaction. 

    My Dad would soak the firewood with lighter fluid or, heaven forbid, gasoline before tossing in the match. You would assume, as I did initially, that my Dad’s addition of lighter fluid to the pile of wood would act as a catalyst because it lowers the activation energy, making it easier for the combustion reaction to start. The wood ignites faster and releases heat and light more quickly. This is especially effective when the wood may be damp. But, since the lighter fluid is completely consumed in the burning process, it is not considered to be a catalyst. 

    In a campfire, metal ions within the embers act as catalysts. These embers, formed from burning wood, retain heat. When new wood is added, the stored heat from the embers lowers the activation energy, thereby accelerating the combustion reaction.

    Temperature: Increasing the temperature typically increases the reaction rate. The hotter the fire, the faster the fuel is consumed, requiring us to add more wood to keep the fire burning.

    Foundational Background Concepts

    Several critical concepts directly relate to chemical reactions. While these concepts aren’t part of the formal reaction process, they play an important role in the comparison between chemical reactions and personal growth.

    Chemical Change vs. Physical Change: In a reaction where there is a physical change, that reaction is reversible. Which means that the reagents can be recovered and do not undergo a permanent change in their chemical structure. As an example, dissolving salt in water. The salt undergoes a physical change. I can recover the salt granules by evaporating the water over a hotplate. As long as I don’t boil the water too vigorously, I can recovered the majority of the salt I added.

    The combustion reaction, our campfire, is an example of a chemical change. The chemical structure of our reagents, the newspaper and the wood, is permanently altered. This reaction is not reversible. I cannot take the ashes, reverse the reaction process and recreate the wood or newspaper.

    Chemical Potential Energy: All substances have stored energy due to their structure or position, which can be converted to another form of energy. In a combustion reaction, each of the reagents has “stored” chemical potential energy due to its structure, which is then “converted” during the combustion process into thermal (heat) and light energy.

    Qualitative vs. Quantitative Analysis: A qualitative analysis focuses on the presence of a product of a chemical analysis. In the example of the campfire, strictly whether the combustion process occurs, reaching an endpoint, the production of heat, or light. A quantitative analysis quantifies, measures the amount of reactants consumed and products produced. For example: “How much firewood was burned?”, “What was the temperature produced in the combustion process?” or “How bright was the light due to the flames?”.

    Use of an Indicator: Whereas one is not used in this example, an indicator is a substance that undergoes a visible change, typically a color change, to signal the current stage or the endpoint of a reaction. They must react sensitively to small changes in the surrounding environment. The color change should be clear and distinct, making it easy to identify a specific endpoint. Acid-base indicators, specifically phenolphthalein, are a good example. These change color depending on the pH of a solution, indicating whether it is acidic, basic, or neutral. 

    Exothermic versus Endothermic Reactions: An exothermic reaction is a chemical reaction that releases energy, typically in the form of heat, light, or sound. The word “exothermic” comes from the Greek roots (exo-) meaning “out,” and (-thermic) meaning “heat.” A common example is our combustion reaction, a campfire, where the energy released from the burning wood (heat and light) is much greater than the initial energy, from a match, needed to start the fire.

    An endothermic reaction is a chemical reaction that absorbs energy from its surroundings. In these reactions, the products have a higher total energy than the reactants, so energy must be continuously supplied for the reaction to proceed. The word “endothermic” comes from the Greek roots (endo-) meaning “in,” and (-thermic) meaning “heat.” A simple example is a cold pack. When you activate the pack, a reaction occurs that absorbs heat from the surrounding environment, making the pack feel cold to the touch. 

    Products versus By-products: Products are the primary and intended substances formed during a chemical reaction. They are the goal, what we expect to achieve in the reaction. In the practical, real-world context of a campfire, heat and light are the primary intended products. We don’t build a fire for the carbon dioxide and water vapor it creates; we do it for the warmth and illumination. So, in this specific case, the heat and light are the desired output, making them the main products.

    By-products are secondary, unintended, and often undesirable substances formed during a chemical reaction.  Unintended outcomes that represent the inefficiency of the chemical reaction, meaning that the reagents are not completely consumed, forming products. In the case of the campfire, the common by-products are: soot, this is unburned carbon that forms when the combustion reaction is not hot enough to convert all the carbon in the wood to carbon dioxide (CO2), Carbon Monoxide (CO), a toxic gas that forms when there is not enough oxygen for a complete reaction, and ash. While each is a predictable part of the combustion process, they are byproducts, in that they are not the intended energy-releasing outputs of the combustion.

    In an upcoming post, I will explore the parallels between the constituents and steps of chemical reactions and the process of personal growth, including the role of our foundational concepts.

  • Weekly Quotation: July, 23rd, 2025: The Choice We Need to Make

    Weekly Quotation: July, 23rd, 2025: The Choice We Need to Make

    For your consideration:

    “We are still in the position of waking up and having a choice. Do I make the world better today somehow, or do I not bother?”

    – Tom Hanks

    We are the architects of our own personal growth, and only we can determine what kind of person we will become. How will you define what personal success looks like? What do you desire? What is your true reward? Is it a high paying position or personal recognition, or is it becoming a person of value who makes those around you better?

  • Becoming Your Own Personal Growth Architect

    Becoming Your Own Personal Growth Architect

    Your Role as an Architect in Your Personal Growth

    You’re building your personal growth building, and you’re the architect. This “architect” is your guide, turning your dreams into a clear vision of what you want to achieve. You acting as your personal growth architect will create a “blueprint” for your development, showing you the structure and key parts of your metaphorical building. Making sure your goals are solid and well defined, explaining how your dreams and goals create a strong foundation for your motivation and expectations, which then helps you move forward.

    But this role of an architect isn’t just about getting things done; it also focuses on how you experience your journey. It ensures everything lines up with who you want to be, both personally and publicly, making your whole growth process real and rewarding. As you start putting your plans into action, this architect offers a blueprint to follow, providing guidance, keeping you on track, helping you adjust, and making sure everything fits with your overall strategy.

    Ultimately, your growth blueprint helps you be clear on your vision, create a smart plan, connect different parts of your development, and finally build the life you imagine. Your growth architect could be your inner self, or a mentor, a coach, or even a structured way of thinking about yourself and your future. Regardless of who assumes the role of your personal growth architect, the blueprint design process begins with self-awareness.

    The Role of Self-awareness

    The most significant component in designing your blueprint for personal growth is self-awareness. It is the prerequisite—our knowledge of who we are and what we desire—on which our blueprint is based.

    Self-awareness can be a complex idea, but consider it this way: I know I want to grow a vegetable garden (self-awareness), versus with my role as an architect on this project, which involves the actual design (blueprint), selecting the plants, and determining their care.

    Self-awareness allows me to understand what I want to do and why I want to do it, my dreams, aspirations, goals, motivations, and expectations. In this particular example, it involves asking: Why do I want a garden? Why is it important to me? What do I expect it to look like? How soon do I want it ready? Once this groundwork is complete, only then can I take on the role of the architect and prepare a blueprint.

    Personal Commentary

    My Dad was a civil engineer. Where an architect works with people wanting to design their new home or businesses wanting to design new office space, my Dad would meet with developers planning new subdivisions, turning their ideas into detailed blueprints for streets, utilities, and home lots. Then, with a survey crew, he’d mark out key locations precisely, giving construction crews exact points to build from. His careful supervision continued until the project was complete.

    I still remember spending Saturday and Sunday afternoons helping my Dad in the field, measuring distances between property lines, new home foundations, utility lines, and easements. I really liked the work, so much so that during college summers, I’d join a survey crew for the Kentucky State Department of Highways, where my Dad was the District Engineer. It allowed me to use the math and physics concepts that I enjoyed from college. Why I didn’t follow in my Dad’s footsteps and become a civil engineer, I don’t know. I guess, like all of us, I needed to find my own path in life.

    I wish I had learned to create a clear blueprint for my life’s dreams and aspirations—something with defined goals and objectives, ways to track my progress, and built-in accountability. Back in college, some of my friends were way ahead of me on this. One good friend, who’s a doctor now, followed in his Dad’s footsteps. He showed up at Centre with a complete and detailed academic plan, knowing exactly which classes he needed for medical school and how hard he’d have to work to achieve the grades he wanted. He even found friends who shared his views to team up with, keeping each other accountable and supporting one another through tough times.

    Looking back, I spent my years throughout high school and my freshman year at Centre unsure of my direction. It wasn’t until my sophomore year, when I met Dr. Walkup, that I found a true mentor. He guided me, set clear expectations for success, and, crucially, held me accountable. Forty-five years later, in my late 60’s, I’d like to believe I know what I’m doing, but sometimes I still have my doubts. Even now, I find myself still searching for a blueprint on how to be the best father, grandfather, husband, and person I can be.