Calm Before the Whirlwind

It is weirdly quiet and calm here at CU. Sort of that ominous quiet before a big storm. I have been working on my courses for the fall and attending meetings. Oh, this morning I ran into this little fellow on the sidewalk in front of CU.


When informed that he would likely be stepped on he bobbed his head with a sense of resignation (echos of a behaviour observed by a student blogger who had the blog "ChemSucks"). In spite of his fatalism I helped him into a nice shaded bit of dewy grass where I like to think he cavorts and gambols in a salamandery way.

I liked this recent cartoon ...

I Always Feel Like Somebody's Watching Me

So, we had a significant precipitation event and I decided to make the Friday circuit to check the stream. It turns out the flow was much higher and had turned the water a light brown. This is what it looked like on Thursday before the rain ...


And on Friday morning after the rain the same section of the stream looked like this (and according to measurements was flowing twice as fast and was twice as deep.)

I made the trip up to the upstream site and the culvert. I did not meet up with any animals this time but I did notice some changes.

The hay bale containment barrier is new and there seems to be a bit of a design flaw in the landscaping since it would appear that the local terrain is draining to the side of the storm sewer rock pit. To my eyes it would appear that the rock pit goes too low and has a conflict with the local water table. There seems to have been some work done on the rock pit as well with the part just below the outfall made of larger stones ending in a meter high rock pile that is followed by a flatter rock field made of smaller rocks down to the stream edge ending in a landscaping fabric hoarding. I think we are going to see the stream back fill into the swampy area and create a pond or stagnant overflow catchment upstream to the rock field. Maybe.

On a different note we have had a game camera sitting in the lab for some time now and I decided to unpack the camera and field test it before the semester starts. I set it up tied to a tree at site 3 just downstream from the culvert. This is where I have run into the mist wildlife but over the three days it was set up it mostly took pictures of me measuring the stream and two dudes with dogs. There is one very faint image made at two in the morning that might be a raccoon but it was not the parade of wildlife that I expected. Oh well.

Science in Cartoons

Curiosity, Childhood and the Scientific Method
(click on cartoon to embiggen)

LINK TO COMIC

Chemistry 1013 Fall 2010

There were some important changes that have been made in the course over the summer. The most important change would have to be the selection of a new textbook. The text for this course will be one by Mahaffey et al (Chemistry: Human Activity, Chemical Reactivity link to text description).

Why change? Well, the previous text was not fitting the needs of the class (to my eyes). This text is a "full service" text meaning that it is large but comprehensive. This is the first time in a long time that I have used a comprehensive text like this in first year chemistry. I have always thought that the large size of such texts would be intimidating especially to weaker students. My mind was changed however in discussions about texts with colleagues at our recent national chemistry conference in Toronto.

The negative aspects of the size of the text are compensated by the significant supports that come with the text including extensive end of chapter questions at varying levels of difficulty. By far however the greatest advantage is access to the online tutor and assignment facility called OWL (link to resource).

The text is about $ 20 more expensive than the previous text but the deciding factor in switching to this specific text is that it incorporates the entire text that I use for the second year organic chemistry course (link to previous organic text). Now this text has a suggested retail price of $ 180 which is more than the first year text that I have chosen so if I can use the Mahaffey text for all three courses (Chem 1013, Chem 1023 and Chem 2113) the students will save a lot of money.

They will have to lug around a large text though and the students that have taken chemistry using the previous text will have to make a pretty dramatic transition from the two texts.

So if you are a first year student or a returning student you will be learning chemistry from the same textbook. I am told that the texts will be available in the bookstore by the middle of August. I will let you know when they are in.

Science in Cartoons