Tuesday, October 17, 2006
Tuesday...
D,G Honors: continued our long intro to the Bohr Model by discussing waves and electromagnetic radiation. There are powerpoints online that provide visuals for our notes. Talked about wavelength, frequency, and speed of waves; "c" is the symbol for the speed of light/any electromagnetic wave of radiation. We calculated wavelengths of various frequencies of electromagnetic waves from FM radio stations.
Thursday, we will discuss additional aspects of waves such as amplitude, intensity, energy, and "wave interference".
Kudos to those who came to extra help and realized the level of explanation required for Friday's test. Based on past class feedback, those who don't practice writing out, over the next two days, DETAILED, specific explanations and descriptions as listed in the test objectives will likely do poorly or not finish the test on Friday. No joke, the next two tests are difficult for most students yet the tests entail writing EXACTLY what was REPEATEDLY described and explained in class. You should definitely see me at extra help if you are unsure of the adequacy of your responses. Another reason to practice writing: YOUR SPELLING and GRAMMAR WILL BE CRITICALLY CHECKED AND GRADED! If you MISSPELL ANY OF THE WORDS FROM THE FILE ( of key words that you may not misspell) ON THE CLASS WEBSITE OR ANY OF THE KEY TERMS THAT WE HAVE USED IN THIS UNIT, POINTS WILL BE DEDUCTED.
Regents: our test has been moved to Friday for this ONE time - I will not usually schedule your test on the day of the Honors and AP class tests; as a result, I expect an A effort and a higher class average. If that doesn't occur, your next test will NOT BE ANNOUNCED.
Extra help may be very crowded on Thursday afternoon because the Honors and AP classes have their tests on Friday also. First come, first served with the questions that day. If extra help is too crowded at a given time, I have continuous extra help until the late buses leave so you can always check in later.
AP: We revisited the Van der Waal's gas equation and then did some stoichiometry of thermochemical equations, today. I will try to do some/most of calorimetry on Thursday. The test will be on material covered through Thursday including past tested and untested Gas Unit material and some built-in stoichiometry questions.
NOW I REMEMBER WHY MOST STUDENTS CAN'T APPLY HESS'S LAW: when I was writing out the solutions to the hw, I recalled that too many students try to do MASSIVE calculations ALL AT ONCE on their calculators without ANY estimate of what the answer should be. Do yourself a BIG FAVOR: before you calculate your Hess's Law answer with the crazy numbers from the data, ESTIMATE YOUR ANSWER BY ROUNDING ALL OF THE NUMBERS TO THE NEAREST TENs OR HUNDREDs place- WHATEVER IT TAKES TO DO THE CALCULATION IN YOUR HEAD!!! You should have a ballpark idea of your answer before you touch your calculator ESPECIALLY of whether your answer is POSITIVE or NEGATIVE. DEFINITELY practice the estimation of your answers and see how good you can get at that, quickly.
Then, DON'T do too much at once with your calculator!!! Get subtotals and then add or subtract as appropriate. THE SIGN CHANGES in the HESS law problems are the real KILLERS.
Mark me, heed my advice. Even the best have fallen on this only to wail, "what a STUPID error that was". I'm just telling you what most of my past students have said before they eventually became more careful. In the class and on the hw, I have tried to emphasize how NOT to repeat those errors (see hw answers on website). Good luck, I hope that we can prove that Hess's Law doesn't have to be messy.
Thanks.
Thursday, we will discuss additional aspects of waves such as amplitude, intensity, energy, and "wave interference".
Kudos to those who came to extra help and realized the level of explanation required for Friday's test. Based on past class feedback, those who don't practice writing out, over the next two days, DETAILED, specific explanations and descriptions as listed in the test objectives will likely do poorly or not finish the test on Friday. No joke, the next two tests are difficult for most students yet the tests entail writing EXACTLY what was REPEATEDLY described and explained in class. You should definitely see me at extra help if you are unsure of the adequacy of your responses. Another reason to practice writing: YOUR SPELLING and GRAMMAR WILL BE CRITICALLY CHECKED AND GRADED! If you MISSPELL ANY OF THE WORDS FROM THE FILE ( of key words that you may not misspell) ON THE CLASS WEBSITE OR ANY OF THE KEY TERMS THAT WE HAVE USED IN THIS UNIT, POINTS WILL BE DEDUCTED.
Regents: our test has been moved to Friday for this ONE time - I will not usually schedule your test on the day of the Honors and AP class tests; as a result, I expect an A effort and a higher class average. If that doesn't occur, your next test will NOT BE ANNOUNCED.
Extra help may be very crowded on Thursday afternoon because the Honors and AP classes have their tests on Friday also. First come, first served with the questions that day. If extra help is too crowded at a given time, I have continuous extra help until the late buses leave so you can always check in later.
AP: We revisited the Van der Waal's gas equation and then did some stoichiometry of thermochemical equations, today. I will try to do some/most of calorimetry on Thursday. The test will be on material covered through Thursday including past tested and untested Gas Unit material and some built-in stoichiometry questions.
NOW I REMEMBER WHY MOST STUDENTS CAN'T APPLY HESS'S LAW: when I was writing out the solutions to the hw, I recalled that too many students try to do MASSIVE calculations ALL AT ONCE on their calculators without ANY estimate of what the answer should be. Do yourself a BIG FAVOR: before you calculate your Hess's Law answer with the crazy numbers from the data, ESTIMATE YOUR ANSWER BY ROUNDING ALL OF THE NUMBERS TO THE NEAREST TENs OR HUNDREDs place- WHATEVER IT TAKES TO DO THE CALCULATION IN YOUR HEAD!!! You should have a ballpark idea of your answer before you touch your calculator ESPECIALLY of whether your answer is POSITIVE or NEGATIVE. DEFINITELY practice the estimation of your answers and see how good you can get at that, quickly.
Then, DON'T do too much at once with your calculator!!! Get subtotals and then add or subtract as appropriate. THE SIGN CHANGES in the HESS law problems are the real KILLERS.
Mark me, heed my advice. Even the best have fallen on this only to wail, "what a STUPID error that was". I'm just telling you what most of my past students have said before they eventually became more careful. In the class and on the hw, I have tried to emphasize how NOT to repeat those errors (see hw answers on website). Good luck, I hope that we can prove that Hess's Law doesn't have to be messy.
Thanks.
# posted by C @ 10:43 PM 
