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.