A college education is all about opening minds. Even when I am presented with two open pathways for growth, the possibility that a life-changing experience lies behind the red door dictates that I open it as well, right?
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The question is not whether we multitask (we all do), but how much do we do and what effect does it have on us? Is switching quickly from email to homework problem to text message to Facebook to YouTube to homework problem just another way of being efficient, or does it have more dire consequences?
The first-ever study of chronic multitaskers was published back in 2009. A team at Stanford gathered 41 subjects. HEAVIES were identified as heavy multitaskers based on the large amount of multitasking they reported doing each day. The other 22 subjects were identified as LIGHTS or light multitaskers because they spent significantly less time each day multitasking.
Once the subjects had been ranked in this way, their ability to process information was tested. But before I give you the results, let me give you a chance to guess the outcomes.
Vote, then check out the results.
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I’m fascinated by how our brains and minds work. We like to think of them as loyal computers, reliably eating up the information we provide, and then issuing the ideas and directions we need to guide our lives. Long before we get to college, we have learned to trust our thoughts as showing us how “things really are,” and our plans and decisions as the way “things should be.”
Of course, from time to time, little breakdowns tell us that our brains and minds aren’t as reliable as we think (if this sounds circular, it should). A song gets “stuck” in my head. No matter how hard I try to stop thinking about it, I can’t. Or, a careful plan that I make for my evening goes awry when a conversation or a visit to the internet gets out of hand. What happened? Where’s my will-power? My self-discipline?
Even when these things happen, I may draw the wrong conclusions. I’m so committed to the “computer” model of how my brain works, I might just see these events as occasional malfunctions, something like the software conflicts that hang up my computer from time to time. However, an article, “Do You Suffer From Decision Fatigue?” (NY Times Sunday Magazine, Aug 21, 2011) by John Tierney reveals that our brains are not the robot-like bits of gray matter that we expect them to be. Thoughts do not logically flow from input data. Instead, an array of factors like time of day, blood sugar level, physical and mental fatigue, the number of decisions that have already been made that day, all influence how our brain operates. A simple decision like, “I should do the next thing on my to-do list: study, arrange a meeting, sleep, exercise, wash my clothes,” can be subverted by factors that we are barely aware of.
Note: The Tierney article opens with a description of Israeli court decisions and how they vary with time of day. For more on this, see “Extraneous factors in judicial decisions,” S. Danziger et al., Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 108, 6889 (2011).
I have found that many more students talk to me after an exam than before. Many more.
The conversations span all kinds of test-related topics, chief among them, anxiety. For example, any number of students will tell me, “I’m not a good test taker.” The bolder ones will flat out say, “anxiety kept me from studying properly before the test” or “anxiety kept me from doing my best on the test.”
So it’s good to know that help for anxious test-takers may finally be at hand.
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Have you seen the movie trailer for Inception? If you have, you will be able to appreciate the movie trailer for Mechanism.
You could say that Mechanism is an organic chemistry student’s worst nightmare, but if you did that, you just might have to face something even worse: Synthesis.
What happens if you cross Lady Gaga with an underpaid biology graduate student? The Hui Zheng lab at the Baylor College of Medicine has the answer and it turns out to be a tricky combination of dominant and recessive genotypes.
Can I get your attention for a sec? Just a sec. I know you’re really here to do some o cheming, but just hang on to that thought for a moment and take a quick look at this:
Maybe worth a chuckle, but see my point? See how far you are from whatever brought you here? The mind naturally drifts, gets stuck, drifts. What’s unnatural is sitting still for 30 minutes to study o chem, write a paper, learn a part for the spring play. But that unnatural activity is a big part of the job description for a Reed College student: “will sit still and focus for up to 30 minutes at a time and repeat.” Expect more posts on the unending war between study and distraction. I’ll tag them “distraction” and/or “study habits”.
In class today, I gave you a special name for 1,2-diols: glycols. Since a 1,2-diol requires a minimum of two carbon atoms, the simplest compound in this class is ethylene glycol, HOCH2CH2OH.
It turns out that one glycol has been in the news a lot recently. During lunch I skimmed through a recent article on hair straighteners that appeared in C&ENews, the weekly news magazine of the American Chemical Society. The article had this to say:
“Straightening techniques such as Brazilian Blowout originated in Brazil, where they’re called escova progressiva
(progressive blow-dry). They provide a few months’ worth of
straightening before wearing off. That staying power comes from fusing
additional amino acids from keratin to the hair fiber. A cross-linking
reagent, such as a solution of formaldehyde gas in water that can go by
the name of formalin or methylene glycol, accomplishes the fusion.”
Methylene glycol, HOCH2OH, contains only one carbon so it is a 1,1-diol. Because this name seems to break the rule that I had stated in class (glycol = 1,2-diol = vic-diol), I decided to do a little more leg work. First, I checked our textbook. Loudon, p. 323, states that glycols contain two hydroxyl groups on adjacent carbons. The Encyclopaedia Britannica gives a looser definition, saying that a glycol is any diol in which the hydroxyl groups are attached to different carbons. Common sense application of these definitions seems to suggest that “methylene glycol” is a misuse of the term “glycol” because this one-carbon compound cannot contain “adjacent” or “different” carbons. This probably won’t keep people from using this term, however, because it sounds very scientific and it is fairly well entrenched.
So why was I reading an article about hair straighteners and why is one “glycol” so newsworthy?
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Homework assignment #6 contained an important announcement, but many students who worked on the homework either ignored the announcement or didn’t fully understand it (and many students may not have even seen the announcement given the small number of completed assignments that were turned in).
Here’s the announcement quoted in its entirety and verbatim:
Reagent Alert: I will not cover, and I am not going to test you on, the chemistry of Hg(OAc)2 + H2O, then NaBH4, but Loudon uses this reagent extensively in practice problems. Every time you run into this reagent, simply substitute another reagent in its place: H2O + cat. H2SO4.
And here’s what I saw on HW #6:
But that’s not all. This reagent-alert does not mean that you should never draw Hg-containing reagents. The activity for class #33 – Alkyne addition reactions: hydrohalogenation and hydration describes the use of salts containing Hg+2 as a method for promoting hydration of alkynes.
Bottom-line: draw H2O + cat. H2SO4 to hydrate alkenes (Markovnikov) and draw H2O + Hg+2 + H2SO4 to hydrate alkynes (Markovnikov).
We do not have any lab work scheduled for this week or beyond. The only
thing that needs to be accomplished by most students is printing the NMR
spectrum of acetylferrocene. This can be done during the lab periods
this week, but you can also do it on your own.
Instructions for printing the NMR spectrum have been added to the Week
#3 section of the acetylferrocene procedure (see lab manual). Please
note that two pages are required.
The lab assistants will be available in the lab from 1-1:30 each day
this week. If no one comes to lab by 1:30, they will go into the
computer room to help out there. If no 201 students seek their help in
the computer room by 2:00, the lab assistants will be free to leave.
After that, all NMR printing will have to be unassisted.
Instructions for writing the acetylferrocene lab report have also been
updated. I will give one final lecture on NMR spectroscopy that also
pertains to the lab report. This will be the Thursday evening *after*
Thanksgiving, Dec 2. The lab reports are due Wednesday, Dec 8.
