Ainan Cawley's Chemical Equations: the "doodles" of a young scientist

Most children doodle. No doubt there is a typical child's doodle: a fairly formless scribble perhaps...or a shape that they like. Ainan Celeste Cawley's doodles are a little different. He is six years old, but his doodles belong in a chemistry paper. Every day he presents to me sheet after sheet of chemical equations, concerning his latest chemical thoughts. They are balanced equations, with state symbols, for often very complex reactions. Where do these reactions come from? In most cases he makes them up. By this I mean that he reacts chemicals in his mind and decides what the outcome would be, based on all that he knows about chemistry...then writes the equations down.

He tends to explore different chemical ideas, looking at the possibilities and presenting me with his conclusions. I duly read them - and they seem correct to me. (I did chemistry up to the end of my first year at Cambridge University).

What I find most remarkable about this is the sheer detail of his work. Every nuance and aspect of a chemical situation is examined - and all of it written down in minutest detail. He will write not only the molecular formulae but also draw the structural formulae, charges, attractive forces - and provide a written commentary on the chemicals, their nature, their purpose, any problems posed in handling them, environmental concerns, toxicity, the need for catalysts, what the catalyst is, the boiling points, melting points etc. The list of aspects to which he gives attention is awesome. Neither are these common reactions that he deals with: he often thinks in terms of the most obscure of reactants, and the most unlikely of reactions and products.

These are not just doodles. These are childhood scientific treatises, in miniature.

(If you would like to learn more about Ainan Celeste Cawley, a scientific child prodigy, his gifted brothers, and child prodigy, child genius, savant, creatively gifted and gifted children in general, then please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html Thanks)