The answers to the final exam have been posted on the Exams page.
I haven’t finished reading the exams yet (I’ve read page one of about
40 exams so far), but an interesting thought occurred to me this past
week that I wanted to share with you.
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I will try to keep you up-to-date by email, but here is where things stand:
HW #1-7 – everything that I have ever received has been read and returned. If you don’t have your assignment, check the box outside my door. If it isn’t there …
HW #8 – I am currently reading these and adding them to the papers outside my door. I expect to finish them before I leave work today, but I can’t promise that.
Exam #1-3 – everything that I have ever received has been graded and returned. If you don’t have your exam, check with Kathy Kennedy, Rm. 303.
Lab reports – I have returned all lab reports except for the isopentyl acetate (banana oil) and acetylferrocene. I will begin returning some of the isopentyl acetate reports today and that will continue through the weekend. I hope to have them all read by Sunday afternoon, but we will see … You will not be allowed to revise either the isopentyl acetate or acetylferrocene reports. What’s done is done.
Where: Rm. 301, Chemistry
When: Sunday, Dec 13, 1:45-3:00
I decided to go with Rm. 301 because the number of students attending these Q&A sessions has fallen considerably. I hope there will be enough room. The Chem 101 people will want to use the room from 3-4 PM so please *ask* your questions during the allotted time. Don’t wait until after its over.
Today’s activity (ChemActivity 34R) used potential surfaces to assign charges to hydrogen atoms in ethylene and acetylene. The charge trend goes like this (I’ve added ethane for good measure):
(least +) H in ethane < H in ethylene < H in acetylene << H in water (most +)
This trend can be rationalized by thinking about the energies of the overlapping atomic orbitals.
The web is a great place to waste, uh, invest one’s spare time, assuming one has any time to spare. YouTube, Facebook, they all have their aficianados, but my cousin Arkee, a retired professor at Tel Aviv University, just alerted me to a totally cool, totally science geek-oriented web site: Trailblazing: Three and a half centuries of Royal Society publishing.
It’s simple to use. You zoom along the time line, click on a year, and see what pops up. Not only do you get beautiful images and well-written explanations about amazing scientific trivia (do you know what kind of animal blood was used in the first blood transfusion?), you also get links to the original Royal Society publications. The following abstract was written by Isaac Newton himself (click on it to expand the image).
with gratitude to PHD comics, the most inspired observers of the modern “scientific condition” …
click on image for full picture