Week 24

If there's one word that could describe this week, it would be disappointment.

I know it's not what anyone wants to hear, but it's the truth. I feel it's my right to express what I felt.

Honestly though, I think I was mostly disappointed by the boat races, and Science Fair the week before. Our boat didn't do so well and neither did my project, so I suppose that may have set an exaggerated theme for this week. I'm having some difficulty recalling the beginning of the week, but I can't recall anything very significant. It's all been the same thing...practice and practice.

I thought I had a good idea of what to do, but when the day of assessment came, I felt pretty lost. One of the questions referred to a topic I was absent for, so I guess that's my fault for not asking. But then there was the  hypothesis question. I didn't really understand that so much, because before and after our ideas were always changing as we learned more about the material. The ionic bond naming system is extremely easy. Maybe too easy...and often that's what really throws me off in assessments or other class quizzes/tests. The actual bonding and balancing charges wasn't so bad either. In particular on one problem however, I was extremely confused when I was confronted by a ionic compound with neutral and negative elements involved. How does that work?? Was this the material I missed? Well, it looks like I will make good use of the next re-assessment.

To sum things up, I wanted to point out that I'm not disappointed in the class or the instructor. I really feel disappointed in myself. Last weeks' project, which took hundreds of sleepless hours and mind-frying headaches which transpired into nothing. The boat which was so concretely designed ended up collapsing to nothing more than soaked leftovers destined for the town dump. And to finish I really didn't put the effort I was planning to put foreword. Hopefully things will look up after my next research project and some upcoming trips.

This adequately displays the material I though I knew well enough.

Week 23(?)

I got to admit it...I think this is one of the funnest classes I've had in my high school career. I've been doing some thinking about all of my classes, so in the end I figured that statement to be spot on. The following experiments make the class so great.

In the beginning of the week we came to the conclusion to Unit 5. I have to say, I really thought it was a short unit, at least compared to the rest. The material I suppose wasn't any different in general. What it lacked in quantity was compensated in quality (if that makes any sense). It seemed like that although there wasn't much to the unit, often times I felt the work to be somewhat challenging. Notably the chemical equation balancing and counting masses. The chemical equations were hard because I couldn't really grasp the whole concept where elements that are di, tri, etc. are differently worked that what you'd expect. The counting masses was challenging because I had to wrap my mind around a totally new concept that contradicted my earlier understandings that were established so long ago. I can't stress this theme enough. It is very strange, and instinctively I wan't to ignore it. At the end though, that's what makes me learn something new.

The rest of the week saw the introduction of Unit 6. From what I can foresee, this is about current and electricity. Before I discuss this, I will tell you I really don't have anything to base my learning on. That's good though; it won't be as challenging as before. I am eager to learn this 'new' material.

We started out with the concept of a charge, and the attractive, non-contact force associated with them. I though that was a good demonstration; showing how the charge has to be made. This led to a similar demonstration with the tape (I'm not sure how much further this was after the original demo). The tape demo was also pretty amusing because instead of showing just the forces and the production of charges, it also showed us the "negative" and "positive" charges that are mutually created. Of course, I was absent the day of  explanation, so I'm not sure if that's a 100% summary. Regardless, it's still pretty cool.

By the end of the week, we had begun talking about electricity further and how electrons determine the "charge." This seems to make sense so far. A negative charge is made my a surplus of electrons, which are negative. A scarcity would be vice versa.

The last thing I can remember was the conductivity experiment. I kind of already knew what was going to happen, however I was quite confused when we used the zinc and the copper. I really expected zinc to work, but I guess not. I was puzzled by the copper, but I quickly realized that there must be a coating around the wire. Interesting that you can apply an insulator so discreetly.

Also, what ever happened to the conductivity tests with the liquids and the logger pro? Was this done when I was absent?

What about this???

Week 21

The first week after break wasn't bad. I was kind of afraid that I would have forgotten what we were up to, but things quickly came back with some review from the previous week.

To get everyone else up to speed, we re-did some of the questions, only this time with twice the given quantity in the questions. To my expectations, this was fairly easy after a weeks' pass.

I felt pretty good about myself after this exercise, not because I found it easy or I got the question correct, but because I drew my members together. Last week, I had to solve, check, and present the question myself. This week, I did my best to explain the process and the necessary steps to accomplish the question. In the end, it all worked out smoothly. I did my part.

The feature of the week was the hydrolysis lab that was performed. I thought it was a very unique experience to actually see this first hand. Besides the cool visual, and already knowing the fundamentals of what was happening, I constantly pondered how it would be possible to calculate the masses -initially.

A few notes for the experiment

Like every other lab, we carefully went through the results and a discussion on the calculations applied to solve for mass. It all made sense without issue. At the end it was a lot like the previous calculations to find X number of moles or Y number of particles etc. In summary it was more simple fractions and conversions.

I felt pretty good for the assessment. Maybe a tiny more practice for myself? But overall I felt everyone should have done well. Speaking of the assessment, I must say; I was surprised. I wasn't expecting an online assessment, but at the same time I felt something like that was coming eventually. 

I had a little trouble with the website at first, but after a quick browser upgrade, I was good to go. Some of the questions were a little alien to me, but after some quick thinking I had an idea of the concepts being practiced in the questions. What really bothered me was the format. I'm not upset about it, but just concerned. What ever happened to the process? That it's not supposed to be about the answer? After taking this quiz I realized that it was just the answer that was being sought. There wasn't any proof of me knowing how I got there. With the previous form of assessments, I think we could go a lot further because it tests us not on our answers, but our understanding of the process.