Too True

Cute ... Disturbing but Cute

Check this out, the LOL Cats are now singing about chemistry!

http://rathergood.com/soluble/

Fundamental Constants

You know, I like the definition of a kilogram as being the mass of one liter of pure water but there are the problems related to exactly reproducing the physical conditions so the genuises at the heart of the metric system had to have physical artifacts to which all samples would be referenced. This article is an amazing admission of the limitations of having physical reference objects.

http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/science/09/12/shrinking.kilogram.ap/index.html

Coins and Metal Prices ... The Story Continues

Link to Globe and Mail Story : Soaring metals prices mean making money costs U.S. a mint (Thursday, August 16, 2007)

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20070816.IBPENNY16/TPStory/

"Because of a surge in the price of copper, the U.S. Mint decided 25 years ago to manufacture the coins almost entirely with zinc, save for the coating on which Abraham Lincoln's profile is engraved.
Now, the fate of the penny is up in the air once again. With the price of zinc soaring amid a worldwide commodities boom, it costs the government almost 2 cents to make each 1-cent coin - a pretty penny considering roughly eight billion new ones are placed into circulation annually.
While it is unlikely the penny will be pulled from circulation, there are some lawmakers who would like to ditch zinc as a raw material and instead use steel or some other less expensive metal."

...

"Francois Velde, a senior economist with the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, said the federal government should rid the U.S. currency of pennies, or at the very least find a cheaper way to make them.
Mr. Velde noted that equivalent coins in Canada, Britain and Europe are made from steel, which is roughly five times less expensive than zinc.
Mr. Weller said Jarden, which produces coin blanks for more than two dozen countries, is "agnostic" about the penny's metal content.
"Should Congress or the Mint suggest a different metal composition, like copper-plated steel or copper-plated aluminum, I'm sure Jarden would be interested in talking to the Mint about their capabilities," he said."

Internet Gleanings

Perspective

http://comics.com/wash/opus/archive/opus-20070805.html

Match Chemistry In the News

Video link to group effort to collect 30,000 match heads in one bucket.
Almost like a collection at church.

Link to match head video

Wikipedia link to match chemistry

Strike anywhere matches:
Phosphorus sesquisulphide [P4S3],
Potassium chlorate [KClO3]

Link to chemistry of related explosive mixtures

The Brutally Honest Personality Test

Your Score: Crackpot - INTJ

33% Extraversion,
80% Intuition,
73% Thinking,
53% Judging

People hate you.

Paris Hilton hates Nicole Richie. Lex Luther hates Superman. Garfield hates Mondays.But none these even rates against the insurmountable hate, people have for you.

I mean, you're pretty damn clever and you know it. You love to flaunt your potential. Heard the word "arrogant" lately? How about "jerk?" Or perhaps they only say that behind your back.

That's right. I know I can say this cause you're not going to cry. You're not exactly the most emotional person. You'd rather spend time with your theoretical questions and abstract theories than with other people.

Ever been kissed? Ever even been on a date? Trust me, your inflated ego is a complete turnoff with the opposite sex and I am telling you, you're not that great with relationships as it is. You're never going to be a dude or chick magnet, purely because you're more concerned with yourself than others. Meh. They all hate you already anyway.

How about this- "stubborn?" Hrm? Heard that lately? All those facts which don't fit your theories must just be wrong, right? I mean, really, the vast amounts of time you spend with your head in the clouds...you're just plain strange.

*****************
If you want to learn more about your personality type in a slightly less negative way, check out this.
*****************

Link: The Brutally Honest Personality Test written by UltimateMaster on OkCupid,

True at all levels of Education

Click on cartoon for a larger image.

LINK

Dumping General Chem Link

I am not formally back since I am on sabbatical but as I come across links that are related to general or organic chemistry I will dump them here.

These two are related and deal with the same topic:

http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=1772978922

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yCfDRvDWid0

I have to say that both are derivative of the famous novella titled "He Who Shrank" written a long time ago when the Bohr model of the atom was just becoming commonly understood.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Hasse

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.