And You Wonder... What Were They Thinking??
Well, I suspected I would have funny stories to share about my teaching experiences. Afterall, I am teaching an introductory chemistry class - this just begs for incidents/errors/just plain fuck ups. My surprise, the funny story doesn't come from my super duper (ha!) students. Rather, it is a gem passed onto me from a fellow graduate student in chemistry who is also being subjected to intro level dimwittedness. I think I just made that word up. Anyway...
This week in chem labs the world 'round (okay, in the majority of institutions of higher learning the in US), students are doing calorimetry. A short explanation for those of you who have (smartly) avoided ever encountering this term... it is a contraption that is used to measure how much heat energy is passed to water by some object (generally a heated metal block). The container is cheap since hundreds of thousands of students do this lab. My students used styrofoam cups as the "calorimeter". My friend's students used a plastic container of some sort (details have yet to be shared - it was a short email).
As I said, they use a heated object like a metal block. You heat this object by putting it over a heat source (or in a heated environment such as a beaker of boiling water which is over a heat source). The heat source is something like a bunsen burning - ya know - the open flame kind of thing... Apparently, some students decided to put the calorimeter over the heat source. Sigh. It's plastic. And so we ask ourselves... What Were They Thinking??? (And I might add - they had directions to follow and this was definitely NOT in the directions!)
I know chemistry is a hard subject for some people but I figure they do what I did about history - avoided it like the plague. Why is anyone who is going to put a plastic cup over an open flame enrolled in a chemistry course? I think that makes it fairly clear that this isn't where his/her strength lies... try something else honey.
Of course, no matter how easily chemistry comes to you, DO NOT GO TO GRADUATE SCHOOL!! Just wanted to take the opportunity to mention that AGAIN.
Hope everyone is having a terrific week. Cheers.
This week in chem labs the world 'round (okay, in the majority of institutions of higher learning the in US), students are doing calorimetry. A short explanation for those of you who have (smartly) avoided ever encountering this term... it is a contraption that is used to measure how much heat energy is passed to water by some object (generally a heated metal block). The container is cheap since hundreds of thousands of students do this lab. My students used styrofoam cups as the "calorimeter". My friend's students used a plastic container of some sort (details have yet to be shared - it was a short email).
As I said, they use a heated object like a metal block. You heat this object by putting it over a heat source (or in a heated environment such as a beaker of boiling water which is over a heat source). The heat source is something like a bunsen burning - ya know - the open flame kind of thing... Apparently, some students decided to put the calorimeter over the heat source. Sigh. It's plastic. And so we ask ourselves... What Were They Thinking??? (And I might add - they had directions to follow and this was definitely NOT in the directions!)
I know chemistry is a hard subject for some people but I figure they do what I did about history - avoided it like the plague. Why is anyone who is going to put a plastic cup over an open flame enrolled in a chemistry course? I think that makes it fairly clear that this isn't where his/her strength lies... try something else honey.
Of course, no matter how easily chemistry comes to you, DO NOT GO TO GRADUATE SCHOOL!! Just wanted to take the opportunity to mention that AGAIN.
Hope everyone is having a terrific week. Cheers.
1 Comments:
I remember in my chem 200 class we were doing the "What chemical is it" through a variety of tests. One of the tests was the "if it burns a blue flame it was this" So the girl next to me did the test - burnt a blue flame and to extinguish you were supposed to restrict the air from getting to it. well she didn't and the thing kept burning... so then she removed the lab book and picked up the beaker... burnt her hand and threw it all over the counter - on my books in with my chemical - sigh.... the worst part about it was we were all reminded not 20 mins before to make sure that the flame was out.
Chem labs are funny places for stupid accidents. Darwin will filter these people out.
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Angry Orange, at 3:50 PM
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