Latest Posts by chem-n-chaos - Page 2

research is such a wild ride.

like. one moment, you're doing find and you have the right paper and you know exactly what the major and minor alleles are, and what the frequency is, and then suddenly you get to trying to figure out what in god's name trichohyalin is actually doing. and. no one would like to tell you, because for some reason is hidden behind so many dang fancy words you don't know, which are hidden in different sections of a paper (is it in the abstract? or do i have to read to the intro? or is it in the discussion? or god forbid, the methods?) and that's hidden behind some stupid 40 dollar paywall. like. god.

....also the article is from either 1980 seems very sus or from 2018 but it's using math that's at least three classes ahead of what you can begin to comprehend.

cool facts

- AgNO3 (silver nitrate) clots blood! it's actually got several medical applications! (and is often in military first aid kits!)

- when oil spills happen, the bacteria which can metabolize polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) tend to rise in population, and those that cannot tend to decrease!

intro chem tips (high school)

#intro

welcome to ramblings on how to survive your first chem class, from someone who’s taken 3 3/4* chem classes and is still kicking.

*1/2 of an outside course and 1/4 of comparing notes with friends taking a companion chem class)

reminder before we start

- not everything works for everyone, so you may have to do some finagling, and that's okay.

- it's important to ask your teacher for help too. asking for help doesn't mean you're dumb, it means you take responsibility for your own understanding, and that is impressive.

- chemistry classes are hard, but they are not a judgment on your soul. you will mess up sometimes, and it will be okay.

#basics

calculations

- remember when your elementary school teacher told you to put units on your work? yeah? okay. it's coming back to haunt you, except now, with algebra. aka, 2000 times worse.

- show. your. work. i don't care how smart you are, or how well you can do mental math. this isn't math, it's chemistry, and we have an added layer of real world context. building on the units bit; if you don't write out what you're doing, you won't know what your calculations are doing, and you'll have to do it all over again. (note: once you're onto your next year or two of chem, you won't always need to write out simple molecular mass calculations, or going from grams to moles. but otherwise, label them well, and ensure that future you knows what you're looking at.)

- get a good calculator. one that you like. one that you will take good care of. one that you can spend the rest of your high school (and maybe college) career with. one that you'll marry. okay, maybe not that. but the point still stands. get a calculator you like, and become well acquainted with it. in the words of my ChemE teacher, "many tears have been shed over mistyped calculations." get a good one, practice using it, and optionally, put nice stickers on it.

- brush up on your basic math. i'm talking like, the elementary school stuff. addition, subtraction, multiplication, division. and also some of the other stuff, like logs and exponents, and general algebra. also, a key concept that has saved my ass many times doing equilibria—if the numerator of a fraction is large, the final number it divides out to will be large, and if the denominator is large, the final number will be small. or, knowing that log of 1 is 0. simple algebra/basic function stuff will help you gut-check your answers! (this is actually part of why i love chem; because of the real world context, you can almost always tell if your answer makes sense, and therefore, the algebra can actually be *gasp* fun!)

labs

- use metric. for those americans out there, this might feel like it sucks. coming from a fellow american—it doesn't. it actually makes a hell of a lot more sense. and all of most science is done this way. so suck it up and get used to it.

- get a watch. it doesn't have to be expensive, but something that has a second hand is useful. for a few reasons. a) measuring seconds is important for some labs, and you don't wanna use your phone because reason b) you don't wanna spill chemicals on and/or contaminate timing tools like stopwatches and phones with whatever you're working with, yet you don't want to take your gloves off.

- when you measure liquids, measure the meniscus. (the "vertex" of whatever parabola shows up where the liquid meets air.) generally, it's concave (upside down rainbow shaped) so you wanna make sure that the lowest point is what you're measuring. in order to see this, you will have to get down to eye level of whatever you're measuring. this... can get interesting. in the words of my lab partner while doing titrations "sweet jesus i feel like my back has aged sixty years in the course of twenty minutes." so. that may kill your back. but it will give you an accurate measurement :D

- the difference between precision and accuracy. when you measure things in chemistry, generally, we take measurements in triplicate (3x), just to make sure we are actually getting the right value, so that if we f*** up once, it doesn't matter as much. but what is the right value? well, if the value we measured is close to the general accepted value of the number (say, if the solution is hypothetically 0.5M, and you got an average of 0.48M from your trials), then we were accurate. if we got 0.30M three times, that means we were very precise, or that our measurements were very close together. generally, we want to be both precise and accurate when doing labs.

- wear your safety goggles and gloves, wear close toed shoes, and tie your hair back—follow the safety procedures. especially the gloves. i can't stress how important this is. for a few reasons. first of all, the obvious. if you are working with highly concentrated hydrochloric acid (a very strong acid), you do not want to accidentally kill your hand/your eyes. i do not recommend being blinded by chemicals. second. contamination. this applies more to biology, but we're gonna talk about it anyway. let's say you're dealing with a bacterial culture, and you get some on your hands. your hands are going to touch a bunch of stuff afterwards, and you might accidentally turn not only your lab, but that bus you took home, and your house into a huge culture surface. unrecommended. third, just straight up peace of mind about the first two. (i spilled low concentration sodium hydroxide on my arm, and even though we took care of it, i was paranoid about that spot of skin itching for the next four days. science classes can be difficult, and none of use need any extra anxiety.)

- label your beakers. i cannot stress how frustrating it can be to be halfway through a lab with ten different beakers half filled with clear liquids, and to then suddenly go "wait, which one is this?" and have to restart the whole thing, because it'd be worse to pour an unknown substance into something else, lest it be the wrong one. also, if you're doing serial dilutions (where you repeatedly dilute something to get specific concentrations of a substance) all the tubes will look the same. and they suck to repeat. so please. grab a sharpie and some tape, and just label it. (pro tip: fold over the edge of the tape on itself, so it's easier to get off when you clean up)

- this one should be pretty obvious, but don't use something if you don't know what it is. avoid unlabeled objects like the plague. (see: potassium metal and water are highly reactive. you think you see some copper metal strips for your galvanic cell? cool, let's just take that and stick it in this beaker of water. oh. oh no. shit, now there's a huge smoke cloud and i think it exploded.) in short, avoid this by making sure you know what you're using, and in what concentration. there is a very large difference between 0.1M hydrochloric acid (very concentrated) and 0.00001M hydrochloric acid (not so concentrated, mostly water.) namely, that 1M hydrochloric acid has a pH of 1 (very very acidic), and that 0.00001M hydrochloric acid has a pH of 5 (like coffee.)

habits/best practices

- take notes. preferably by hand. in the words of my intro chem teacher "this is a hill i will die on." i'm inclined to agree with him. chemistry has a lot of equations that cannot be easily typed out, and on top of that, it is often useful to annotate your calculations later, either with the logic behind it, or with mistakes you've made. some people *cough that one kid in my chemE class* manage to use latex software in order to do their calculations, but from my perspective, it just doesn't make sense; your teacher will be writing on the board, most of your classmates will be doing things on paper, you probably don't want to use your computer during the labs for fear of spilling chemicals on it, and your tests will probably be on paper. all in all, i would recommend taking notes by hand (if you're an ipad kid, that's also fine). for those of you who can do it on a computer, you have my respect, y'all are built different.

- pick a lab partner you can work well with. if you can. come early on the first day of class, and choose carefully who you sit next to. some teachers will say that that person is your lab partner for the rest of the year. general rules of thumb for picking a lab partner boil down to having ARC with them. A) you have an amicable relationship with them—you may not want to pick your bestie though. as i have learned the hard way, not all of your friends are good academic partners. R) they're reliable. they turn things in on time, and you can be sure they'll have your back in whatever shenanigans you get into. C) you can communicate with them. arguably the most important point, 'cuz if you can always work on your friendship and boundaries/expectations using communication, but not always the other way around. good luck, and pick a partner you have ARC with :) (we'll expand on this in the lab partner section)

#lab partners

intro

earlier we discussed having ARC relationship with your lab partner, which is an amicable, reliable, and communicative relationship. see best practices of #basics.

misc tips

- get their phone number for easy communication

- have an established way of sharing files, be it email, text, or a shared folder.

- ask them about their work style- do they like to do things early, or closer to the deadline. this can be helpful to know if you have different work styles, so there's no frustration or anxiety stemming from miscommunication.

flag system - an expansion of the ARC system

green flags and their reasons

1) they're nice - you don't want to work with someone you dislike

2) they pay attention in class - you want to have a lab partner who understands the activity and doesn't goof off.

3) they respect the teacher - hopefully the teacher is very neutral and doesn't treat students differently based on how respectful they are. unfortunately, this isn't always true. while i'm not saying you should work with the teacher's favorite, it can be awkward to work with someone who disrespects the teacher, and as a result, causes the teacher to look at your work unfavorably.

4) they're a reliable student (they do work, they turn things in on time, they will communicate and advocate when they can't.) - it's nice to have a partner you can depend on, but most importantly, to know when you can't expect them to fulfill their part. sure, it sucks when someone else doesn't do their work, but it's even worse when they don't tell you, and you're left hanging the day of.

5) they'll communicate with you - see earlier point about being left hanging. in addition, clear communication can help set expectations, and help both of you feel better about making constructive criticism about each other's work, and make both of you better.

6) they show up to class - it sucks to be stranded without your partner, cuz then you do 2x the work, so good to know your partner will be there when you need them.

red flags and their reasons

1) they don't communicate with you, and won't tell if you if they need to bail on something - see green flag 4.

2) they wait till the last minute for assignments - if you're an anxious bean, you may do everything early. having your partner do their work last minute may add to your anxiety and cause an "should i do it, cuz it's like 11:00pm?!?" dynamic, which is awkward.

3) they don't take feedback from you/teacher (assuming it's politely and respectfully given) - it can be difficult to feel confident about your work if your partner isn't okay with having their work modified. however, some tact is required, as no one wants to feel criticized. i recommend things like saying "hey, i was wondering if we could review x section, i had some ideas for *insert thing in x section,* but since i know we agreed to split up the work, and we decided that was your section, i wanted to get your input."

dividing work

- often, it can be difficult to work efficiently in pairs if you don't do some level of "divide and conquer," especially if you're working asynchronously. in order to make sure everyone participates a little bit in each section, my partner and i often agree on a solution where, say, i'll take the intro and the data section, along with crunching it into graphs, and they'll take the methods and results section with the calculations. then, we'll meet up later, and go over each other's sections, and make sure everything is in order. then, we'll both do a final readthrough to ensure everything seems seamless. if you have an ARC relationship with your lab partner, this should work pretty well.

troubleshooting

lab partner issues, are, unfortunately, all too common. i have yet to find a perfect partnership, only better ones. here are some trouble shooting tips for when things go awry.

make sure you divide work. it makes it easier to negotiate in situations when someone doesn't hold up their half of the bargain.

if you're having trouble communicating with them, finding a time to chat with them, say, after class, can be useful. general tenets of good communication apply here, and are listed below.

a) not accusing them, but rather explaining which actions, or things you have percieved, have frustrated/angered/saddened you.

b) proposing solutions. having a lot of problems without solutions can be frustrating. your solution can be "we shouldn't be lab partners anymore."

c) listening to them, too.

if they aren't doing work, talk to them about it, ideally early, and in a gentle manner. try "hey, i noticed that you haven't done the section we agreed to have you do last week. do you need any help, or are you planning on doing it later?" this give them an opportunity to explain they've got a different work style, or that they don't know what's going on.

alternatively, if this is a repeated problem, go to the teacher and let them know. try "hello [teacher name], i wanted to talk about some of the lab reports we've been doing lately. i just wanted to let you know that i've been doing most of the work, even though i've asked my partner about finding a more equal distribution of work. given that this work is designed for two people, i've been finding it to be a bit much, and was wondering if i might be able to split the sections with my partner, and label the ones i've done to show that i've done my half. if i do this, would you consider not grading it incomplete for me, if i've done my half of the work?"

if they don't show up, i'd also recommend talking to your teacher and asking if you can be added to another partnership or be given a modified version of the work. especially with this type of problem, your teacher will likely understand and agree that it's difficult for one person to keep up with a workload designed for two people.

#tests

preparation

- practice problems, practice problems, practice problems. these are the key to doing well on tests. after all, most questions aren't going to be just theory, they're going to ask an applied question. practice problems will help you learn to turn words into equations, and to be familiar with any strange formats your teacher may throw at you. my personal recommendation would be to do the studyguide (if you are fortunate enough to have one), redo some homework problems, and then turn to google. literally anything you can find on google (as long as it's actually correct.) the weirder and stranger and more difficult the problems are, the better the chances of you actually understanding the core of the content, and being prepared for any weirdness your teacher gives you. just grind them for a few hours (take breaks though!) and you'll find that at the very least, the basic calculations are easier, so even if it takes you a while to figure out the individual steps in a larger question, the component steps will be easier. (also, write up generalized steps of how to solve problems. eg: first, divide by this, then convert to xyz, and then take the negative log, etc. these generalized steps can help if you ever get stuck in the thick of a problem)

- bang your head against the wall memorization. sometimes you will have to do this, especially with equations. my recommendation? chant like you are summoning a demon. especially if there are mneumonics. there are amazing. just chant until you think the demon is intentionally ghosting you because of how many times you've repeated the summoning. (to this, quizlet is also very helpful for non-formula things, like solubility rules.)

- memorize, don't derive. going back to equations here, you will not have time to rederive the whole equation during a test. memorize it, and get if out of your system. efficiency is key.

- fix your sleep schedule. i know, it sounds ridiculous, but make sure you get good sleep the entire week before for best retention and performance.

the day of

- go through your useful formula, chant anything you were supposed to memorize, and look at some practice problems. you may not have time to solve them, but look at the problems, and walk yourself through how you would solve them.

- bring a small fidget, like a hairband. you may not be allowed to have a real fidget like a spinner or cube, but having a small outlet for nervous energy can be helpful.

- spend time with people who are calming. if this is nobody, that's okay. find a nice spot by yourself, put in your headphones, and breathe. (try box breathing.) if you have friends in the class, try not to let yourself listen to them talk about the test, as their nervousness can impact your ability. (honestly, for more on this, just search up sports psychology stuff, alternatively, https://bulletproofmusician.com/ is a great site with lots of helpful tips for performing under pressure.)

- eat well the day of, and don't up your caffeine intake, especially if you're anxious. too much caffeine can make you extra jittery, which can detract from focus.

- bring a watch to measure time.

- if you feel yourself panicking during the test, breathe a little bit, close your eyes, re-read the question, gut check your answer, and check your algebra.

#resources

- your teacher. your teacher should always be your primary resource. ask them for help, extra problems, or even tangentially related knowledge. a good relationship with your teacher can make your chem experience exponentially better.

what to do if your teacher sucks/can't provide the resources you need/is busy/literally any other reason they're not a good resource for you. listed in the order i would recommend them. (but not between online resources and human resources; both are great, preference depends on the person.

online resources

- khan academy. khan academy has great resources, and a semi-structure curriculum, which is great if you're stuck. they've got practice problems, video explanations, and articles.

- chemistry libre texts. literally my savior. unfortunately, tends to be rather surface level, but great for clarifying questions.

- ap chem/gcse chem/a-level chem practice tests/textbooks/websites. these only cover specific sections of chemistry material, but given that it's an intro class, you should be able to find all you need here.

- youtube. further into void territory, and not always correct, but good if you're on something somewhat obscure/have run out of khan academy stuff.

- googling the topic you need help with. the most sus.

human resources

- TAs. not every class has them, but they're also great at explaining things, and if they've taken the class, can give you helpful tips and tricks. they're also usually less intimidating then the teachers themselves.

- tutors. obviously, these cost money, and are not available to everyone, but if you are able to get one, they are an amazing resource.

- upperclassmen. while they usually can't reteach you the curriculum, they can usually give you quick tips and tricks for solving quickly, or tips on the teacher's style. take their advice with a pinch of salt though, because there's quite a possibility they remember something wrong.

- discords, specifically those geared towards homework help. obviously, the advice is being given by other people, so it can be a little sus, but it is much better than nothing. take their advice with a pinch of salt though, because there's quite a possibility the are still students themselves, or are just synthesizing information they've learned after a quick google.

#closing

don’t stress out! (you will inevitably, but try to mitigate it.) you’ll be fine. have fun! chemistry is fun! channel your inner mad scientist. good luck. remember that this class is not a judgement on your soul. take breaks. hydrate. and lastly, remember your units.

language learning tips

-listen to disney songs in your target language. 

-watch tv shows with subs, dubs or both in your target language. 

-find some pop songs in your target language and listen to them while you work on something else. 

-when memorizing vocab, try writing the vocab in sentences, rather than just learning the vocab itself. try to make the example sentence as funny/ridiculous as possible, so you remember it later. 

-try texting a friend who speaks/is learning your target language. you might surprise each other with new words, and you’re more likely to remember them if they have context, eg. talking with a friend.