A Time to Begin A Time to End

I started this blog to help me teach my courses. The experiment was not successful in any way that I had intended it. The stats indicate a fairly constant number of people monitoring the blog but the use of the blog as a means for students to comment, ask questions or offer supplementary material was, for the most part, an unused opportunity. I had mis-read why some students were silent or apathetic in my courses and it was not for lack of an anonymous opportunity to participate at their own time and in their own way.

I made a commitment to keep the blog going for the whole academic year and that is what I did. My sabbatical will take me away from teaching for a year and so I will leave this blog up for a while and then decide if I should delete the whole blog.

To those of you that dropped in ... thanks for looking (and in some cases commenting). The companion blog to this Eppur Si Muove I set aside for Christianity and the Natural Sciences and that blog will also fall silent now. Again I will let it be for a while and then decide if it should be deleted. If I decide to continue to offer anything up for blogging over the next year or so it will be on the research blog "A Pale Blue Gas". We will see.

Take Care.

Professor Honeydew

BI3203 I Am a Rock, I Am an Island

At a molar mass of 14,400 g/mol getting a single crystal this big, this clean and this symmetric has got to be worth some praise.

Link to details on lysozyme

The final exam is "in the can". There are the predictable sections on memory work, short answer, long answer and explain the significance of the following diagrams. If you have any questions let me know.

The notes from the remaining chapters that we covered have been deposited on the course webpage.

CH1023 W07 Not all Tears are Evil

So here we are at the parting of our ways. We had 38 hours of lectures, 12 hours of tutorials, 36 hours of laboratory instruction plus whatever time you put into the course on your own. You were tested/marked/quizzed and examined 30 times in this course. Thank-you for sticking with the course to the very end.

I will be in touch early next week about lab report and lab binder marks.

I know you have filled out student evaluations but if you still have something to say, I keep an eye on the RateMyProfessor.com site and you are welcome to leave a comment there.

Link to RateMyProfessor

If you were just here for the year then I hope the year has gone well and I pray that you have found ABU to be a good school to attend. If you are returning next year, I am going on sabbatical so I will not be around (well, I will still be round just maybe not around). I hope your next year goes well.

Whatever happens, you will all continue in my prayers as you head out for whatever the summer will bring you. Take care ... be well.

By the way, don't you people write your names on anything? Two students left stuff in the examination room and neither has their name written on them anywhere. One is just a textbook and some looseleaf but the other is a knapsack with a text and clipboard. The only thing that I could find that was even loosely identifiable were some notes that some students were passing each other in math class. The notes were about how hot someone's sister was and how another student was "working on not lusting this semester". Good luck with that.

ABU Science in the News

Link to Today's Times and Transcript Article

Photo Caption: Mad scientist?
Forest Glen School in Moncton held a science enrichment day yesterday with invited guests from many scientific fields. Student Logan Quinn has carbon dioxide vapour poured on his head by ‘mad scientist' Trevor Nason of Atlantic Baptist University.

Way to fight the stereotype! I prefer "misunderstood" to "mad" but I guess it is all the same. Actually, we are all proud of you. Well done.

CH1023 W07 Pre-exam Tutorial

I will offer a pre-exam tutorial in room 240 from 1:30 PM until there are no more questions (or supper time ... you do not want to be between me and food).

All are welcome, bring a friend.

CH1023 W07 Prof. H What's on the Exam?

We all know that the final exam covers the whole course. We also know that:

a) it is highly unlikely that any significant part of the final exam will be drawn from some minor point. In general if I have spent a lecture or more on a topic (or there was a lab on the topic) you can expect it to make a significant part of the final exam.

b) I can't ask you everything. That means that when it comes down to exam design I cannot really ask you to answer more than six big questions. Naturally that means that there will be at least three chapters that you will be able to avoid ONLY IF I GIVE YOU CHOICE FOR ALL CHAPTERS. As it stands now you will have limited choice meaning that I have chosen not to ask questions on all the chapters.

c) exam design is largely that of the tests, if you were ready for the tests you are ready for the exams. In general, the form you can expect will be the following:

Part A: Short answer (no choice)
Part B: Short calculations (limited choice)
Part C: Short explanations (limited choice)
Part D: Long answer questions (limited choice)
(I reserve the right to make changes to this structure)


Material from the text that will be covered on the final exam:

C11: Organic Chemistry [full chapter including skeletal structures]
Key to xm: structure / nomenclature, classes of reaction

C12: Intermolecular Forces [full chapter]
Key to xm: kinetic molecular theory, structure – density, phase changes

C13: Colligative Properties [full chapter]
Key to xm: concentration conversion, colligative properties

C14: Kinetics [full chapter and 21.3]
Key to xm: rate constant / rate laws, integrated first order, Arrhenius

C15: Equilibrium [full chapter]
Key to xm: calc K, calc concentration, LeChatalier’s

C16: Acid / Base Equilibria [full chapter]
Key to xm: pH / pOH / pKa , calc concentration, salt solutions

C17: Acid / Base and Solubility Equilibria [17.1-17.6 only]
Key to xm: buffers, Henderson – Haselbach, solubility and molar solubility

C18: Thermodynamics [18.1 – 18.5 only]
Key to xm: calc entropy rxn, explain entropy rxn, calc free energy , explain free energy, H/S = T
Review Questions:18.12, 18.14, 18.18, 18.20

C19: Redox and Electrochem [19.1 – 19.4 only and only referenced to lecture notes]
Key to xm: Balance half reactions, calc Ecell, draw cell
Review Questions: 19.2, 19.12, 19.16

This made me laugh

A science professor posted some of the answers on tests and exams that he has had to mark over the years. I laughed. I cried. It is unfortunately true that the answers that I have marked over the years that are like these typically the student does not know that what they have written is funny.

Link to post

I would note that some of the comments are vile but that is the nature of the internet.

Monday Cartoon and Quote

"Now, my own suspicion is that the universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose. I have read and heard many attempts at a systematic account of it, from materialism and theosophy to the Christian system or that of Kant, and I have always felt that they were much too simple. I suspect that there are more things in heaven and earth that are dreamed of, or can be dreamed of, in any philosophy. That is the reason why I have no philosophy myself, and must be my excuse for dreaming."
John Burden Sanderson Haldane (1892-1964) English geneticist.

This is how the world ends ... Or a Great SF Plot

From the Associated Press News Service:

"PHOENIX (AP) - Behind the county hospital’s tall cinderblock walls, a 27-year-old tuberculosis patient sits in a jail cell equipped with a ventilation system that keeps germs from escaping. Robert Daniels has been locked up indefinitely, perhaps for the rest of his life, since last July. But he has not been charged with a crime. Instead, he suffers from an extensively drug-resistant strain of tuberculosis, or XDR-TB. It is considered virtually untreatable."

It will be the diseases that killed thousands of people in the early 20th century. It will be the very diseases that a triumphant modernist worldview proclaimed conquered. It will be diseases that we thought we had a cure for that will turn on us and end our world as we know it. A truly infectious, communicable disease where only true isolation can slow the spread. The military knows that you never leave a viable enemy behind your lines and we have known for generations that where prolific organisms have a survival rate that is not equal to zero that tolerant populations arise. That is what has happened.

So what do you do when a person shows up whose actual existence is a threat to humanity? SF has worked this plot over and over but it would appear that we are rapidly approaching the point where here and now, in a society defined by its cult of the individual and the rights of the individual over the majority, that we will have to start making: a) decisions to isolate people indefinitely for the sole reason that we cannot cure the chronic infectious disease that they carry or b) even worse (think "Outbreak").

What would Jesus do indeed.

CH1023 Class Assignment

OK, we have just finished T3 and we pretty much have a straight run to the final exam (FXM). There will be a bit of solubility and a short chapter on thermodynamics. If time allows we will will get some electro chemistry. So all-in-all we should have a good feeling for the course now.

This class assignment is to nominate and vote for equations that you would like to be given on the final exam. You may nominate as many as you like but only one at a time and you must give a reason for your nomination. I will put UP TO TEN equations on the final exam depending on the class participation and vote. If no one participates and no one votes for an equation then I guess there will be no equations given but if twenty equations are nominated and all get equal votes then I will choose by lottery.

Just as at the end of last semester there will be two marks assigned for this assignment: a mark out of 10 for the final list (based on my assessment of the importance / utility / difficulty in remembering) and a mark out of 10 for the students individual participation.

So it is up to you. Start nominating and voting. This assignment will close at 12 midnight Sunday, April 15.

Warmed Over Thoughts about Global Warming

There have been some articles that have popped up recently that have given me pause. The tone of the articles is a blend of fatalism and pragmatism. What I like about the new tone however is the lack of blame.

It seems that the most inflammatory aspects of global warming, what causes the most screaming, is assigning cause and effect blame. I am not going to engage in that debate, there seems to be plenty of rhetoric about what is the cause of global warming that obscures the more important question "What should be our response to global warming?" In my opinion, informed by my general reading of both the scientific and popular press, global warming is happening.

It is true that I have never seen reports that properly accounted for the vast carbon dioxide and methane reserves in the oceans which are intimately linked to trivial changes in salinity and temperature. Forget the atmosphere, if the oceans ever decide that they don't like us they can turn the Earth into Venus in less than a century.

In my opinion, people that claim that global warming is not occuring can also claim a position with the earth centered Aristotlians that opposed Galileo and would not look through his telescope.




All in all, my position is:

If we did it ... we cannot fix it in our lifetimes so we have to figure out a way to survive.
If we didn't do it ... then we have to figure out a way to survive.

Yes, there is a strong political agenda at play

No, it is not clear that we are totally to blame ... but does that matter?

So what is a Christian, facing a warmer future with a responsible attitude towards the environment to do?

I do not think turning our lives inside out will do much good. And allowing people to cause panic just gives them a power they should not have.

My response is in two phases the first theological and second pragmatic.

First, if we consider instead a more simple question ... "How would God expect me to respond to a blessing?" we might be able to find wisdom.

God blesses us so that we might enjoy the blessing, that we might be encouraged in our service to Him, that we might show our love to Him by using the blessing to bless and encourage others.

Second, if we consider this good Earth to be a blessing from God then it seems straightforward:

Enjoy this good Earth as a blessing.
Find aspects of this good Earth that encourage us ... look up the stars or down at molecules ... either way we will find that God has not hidden his hand.
Respond to the blessing by making a simple ecological and environmental covenant:

Just as this good Earth has blessed me I must not allow my actions and my life to prevent it from doing the same for other that live with me or will come after me.

In my opinion, what happens next is just good stewardship.

TIME magazine has a remarkable article out now on simple, non-crazy things we can do personally or encourage regionally / nationally that show good stewardship as opposed to panic. It seems to make sense to me.

LINK TO THE TIME MAGAZINE ARTICLE

Really, what responsible, calm response could we have?

BUY LAND / PLANT TREES. Probably the one most important thing you can do is make sure that at the end of your life you are responsible for more trees than less trees.

Live small ... reduce, re-use, recycle.

Eat local food. If God had wanted us to have fresh spinich in the winter he wouldn't have created e. coli.

Drive a small car that is well maintained.

CHANGE YOUR LIGHTBULBS NOW. You know, I just do not understand people. We knew the truth as children. The whole concept of the Easy Bake oven is that incandescent lightbulbs give off huge amounts of excess heat. Connect the dots for Pete's sake.

Use public transportation.

If you live in the country ... minimize your water use (domestic sewage in rural environments is a ticking timebomb that no one talks about)

If you live in the city ... turn on the taps. There are a number of reasons but most importantly is that the most clean and aggressively protected wild areas near cities are the protected watersheds for municiple water systems. Secondly water is a renewable resource and lack of clean water elsewhere in the world is a stupid reason for those that have lots limit its use ... it is clean water habitat that we need to conserve as aggresively as possible.

Stop treating flushes and drain as magic holes that transport everything you don't want to someplace you don't care about.


Panic Bad.
Crazy Bad.
Blessing Good.

Tuesday Quote and Cartoon

“Science does not rest on solid bedrock. The bold structure of its theories rises, as it were, above a swamp. It is like a building erected on piles. The piles are driven down from above into the swamp, but not down to any natural or ‘given’ base; and if we stop driving the piles deeper, it is not because we have reached firm ground. We simply stop when we are satisfied that the piles are firm enough to carry the structure, at least for the time being.”

Karl Popper, The Logic of Scientific Discovery, (New York, Routledge Classics, 1959, reprint of first English edition, 2002), 94.

Friday Quote and Cartoon

"You mean that in a room full of industrial solvents you figured that the best thing to use to clean your laboratory glassware was your own spit?"

Professor Honeydew to Rowlf, this morning.

Friday Cartoon and Quote

(Click on cartoon for better view)

"I attempted mathematics [at Cambridge University ], and even went during the summer of 1828 with a private tutor (a very dull man) to Barmouth, but I got on very slowly. The work was repugnant to me, chiefly from my not being able to see any meaning in the early steps of algebra. This impatience was foolish, and in after years I have deeply regretted that I did not proceed far enough at least to understand something of the great leading principles of mathematics; for men thus endowed seem to have an extra sense. But I do not believe that I should ever have succeeded beyond a very low grade."

Charles Darwin (A biologist of some sort) in his Autobiography

Friday Cartoon and Quote

Sometimes I am a little unkind to all my many friends in education ... by
saying that from the time it learns to talk every child makes a dreadfull
nuisance of itself by asking "Why?". To stop this nuisance society has
invented a marvelous system called education which, for the majority of
people, brings to an end their desire to ask that question. The few
failures are known as scientists.
-- Hermann Bondi (Austrian/British mathematician/cosmologist,
1919-) in "Review of Cosmology", Monthly Notices of the Royal
Astronomical Society, 1948 108,107.

Hey ... That's What I Said!

Not that I should be boasting but the weekend Globe and Mail had an article that supported much of what I had said earlier about climate change. In particular the graph at the right shows that the expected increase in CO2 and global temperature should make things alot worse for growing grain in the developing world but a lot better in Canada, Northern Europe and Russia. If the trend hold the article predicts "devastating" levels of environmental refugee's




Link to article in Globe and Mail

Lab Conversations

How many times have I been wandering the lab and a student holds up a test tube with a clear colourless solution in it and asks "Does this look right?" and we will have a conversation just like this one that is making the rounds on the internet now ...

(By the way TA = teaching assistant)

TA: What went on in this lab?
Student: What do you mean?
TA: What did you do in this lab?
Student: Lab 3.
TA: And what did you do in lab 3?
Student: We measured the result.
TA: Assume I’ve never seen this lab before, and you’re going to explain it to me. What would you say?
Student: (pause) Well, it was all about getting the slope.
TA: The slope of what?
Student: The slope of the plot.
TA: I know that, but you have to assume I’ve never heard of this lab, ok? How would you explain what you did?
Student: We got the wires and measured at each point.
TA: Measured what?
Student: What the meter said.
TA: (pause) Look. Your report tells me nothing; this could be an experiment about baking cakes. What’s this number here?
Student: 5.
TA: Yes I KNOW it’s 5. What did it measure?
Student: The slope. Of the line.
TA: What line?
Student: The line. On the plot. We measured the points and plotted them.
TA: Why?
Student: (knowing smile) Because that’s what the lab said.
TA: If I was a total stranger, how would you explain this to me?
Student: You just connect it up–
TA: Connect WHAT up?
Student: The circuit.
TA: Why?
Student: I’m sorry, I don’t know what you’re asking.
TA: I’m asking: what is this lab all about?
Student: Well, we put in the wires and got 5.
TA: 5 what?
Student: The slope.
TA: WHAT was it’s slope?
Student: 5.
TA: I KNOW that, but what was it a measurement of?
Student: The meter.
TA: (sigh) One more time — consider me a total stranger. How would you explain this to me?
Student: You just put on the wires and vary the dial until you get the readings.
TA: What dial?
Student: On the power supply.
TA: Why was there a power supply?
Student: Well, for the circuit.
TA: And what readings are you talking about?
Student: The readings in the plot.
TA: They gave you a plot in the lab manual?
Student: I’m sorry, I don’t know what you’re asking.
TA: Where did the plot come from?
Student: We drew it.
TA: From what?
Student: From the experiment.
TA: The experiment about what?
Student: About lab 3.
TA:….

Me, You and Wikipedia

I have been asked in a couple of my courses about my classification of the information that comes from Wikipedia. This is not an issue limited to my personal response to a tertiary reference source if you read the link below.

I respect Wikipedia for its accessibility, open community concept and GENERAL reliability but IT IS NOT AN APPROPRIATE ACADEMIC REFERENCE FOR UNIVERSITY work. It usually does give a good broad overview of a topic and more usefully provides links to more appropriate online sources. Therefore, in reports and papers in my courses wikipedia should not be in your reference list but it can appear in your bibliography.

Link to New York Times article on Wikipedia as an academic reference

This link was brought to my attention in a chemsitry blog that I monitor named "The Chem Blog".

Friday Cartoon, Quote and Link

"It is not enough to have a good mind:
One must use it as well"

Rene Descartes



It does not seem to matter how long in advance students are warned about tests, term papers or exams. I am convinced that the translation of the latin motto for ABU must be "The last minute is the best minute".

The following link is a flash back to when I was younger and the Ontario government sponsored an after school TV puppet program to encourage kids to stay away from drugs. The scientist character in the program was always fascinating to me in terms of his mannerisms and hair style. This video was produced by some american amateur film makers who somehow got ahold of the original tape and made some changes. Warning: there are some disturbing images in this video beyond the hair style of the scientist.

Link to video

The Continuing Crisis: Toxic Squirrels

The New Jersey Department of Health and Senior Services issued a warning in January to residents of the city of Ringwood that they should limit their intake of squirrel to no more than twice a week (children once a month). (A toxic waste dump is nearby.) [New York Daily News-AP, 1-25-07]