Chemistry: The Other Foreign Language
How is it that a student can come to my office hours, explain the complicated concepts that a problem set question is based on, even go as far as to intuit the right approach for solving the problem, and yet, is not able to derive the right answer? I am sure many GSIs of general chemistry, or of any introductory physical science class for that matter, have asked themselves this question numerous times throughout a semester. One of the biggest problems facing students in general chemistry classes is their inability to communicate what they actually know about the concepts on an exam or a problem set. The inability to communicate what they know and receiving a low test score on material they actually understood will undoubtedly frustrate students to the point of giving up. The reason for the students' lack of chemical communication skills is simple: they spend very little time learning, practicing...
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... and shouldn't continue. An overwhelming number of students responded that the problem solving sessions and drills were very helpful, and wanted more time devoted to those exercises. Furthermore, my section as a whole improved continually on exams throughout the semester. The section went from being one of the lower scoring sections (i.e., below the class mean) on the first exam, to being the highest scoring section on the final exam by an entire standard deviation.
The alliance formed between the US and USSR during the second world war was not strong enough to overcome the decades of uneasiness which existed between the two ideologically polar opposite countries. With their German enemy defeated, the two emerging nuclear superpowers no longer had any common ground on which to base a political, economical, or any other type of relationship. Tensions ran high as the USSR sought to expand Soviet influence throughout Europe while the US and other Western European nations made their opposition to such actions well known. The Eastern countries already under Soviet rule yearned for their independence, while the Western countries were willing to go to great lengths to limit Soviet expansion. "Containment of 'world revolution' became the watchword of American foreign policy throughout the 1950s a...
If a random individual were asked twenty years ago if he/she believed that science could clone an animal, most would have given a weird look and responded, “Are you kidding me?” However, that once crazy idea has now become a reality, and with this reality, has come debate after debate about the ethics and morality of cloning. Yet technology has not stopped with just the cloning of animals, but now many scientists are contemplating and are trying to find successful ways to clone human individuals. This idea of human cloning has fueled debate not just in the United States, but also with countries all over the world. I believe that it is not morally and ethically right to clone humans. Even though technology is constantly advancing, it is not reasonable to believe that human cloning is morally and ethically correct, due to the killing of human embryos, the unsafe process of cloning, and the resulting consequences of having deformed clones.
Cloning is the creation of an organism that is an exact genetic copy of another. Every single bit of DNA is the same. There are three different types of cloning. Gene cloning produces copies of genes or fragments of DNA, reproductive cloning creates copies of whole animals, and therapeutic cloning builds embryonic stem cells for experiments aimed at creating tissues to replace injured or diseased tissues. In 1997 scientists in Scotland announced the birth of a clone. Its name was Dolly; after the American country singer. She was the clone of an adult female sheep, and the first mammal to ever be cloned successfully. As Dolly matured, she mated with a ram, and gave birth to a lamb showing that clones have the ability to reproduce. Dolly died at the age of six. According to Sheep 101, the life expectancy for a sheep is 10-12 years, but some sheep can live up to 20 years.
possible, until “Dolly” (the first fully grown mammal to be cloned). A “human clone” is
In the past, cloning always seemed like a faraway scientific fantasy that could never really happen, but sometimes reality catches up to human ingenuity and people discover that a fictional science is all too real. Such was the fate of cloning when Dolly, a cloned sheep, came into existence during 1997, as Beth Baker explains (Baker 45). In addition to opening the eyes of millions of people, the breakthrough raised many questions about the morality of cloning humans. The greatest moral question is, when considering the pros against the cons, if human cloning is an ethical practice. There are two different types of cloning and both entail completely different processes and both are completely justifiable at the end of the day.
Even though cloning methods have been in use for an extended period of time, the idea of a clone was never thought to be realistic until recently. For thousands of years, humans have been cloning plants through asexual propagation. This is simply the process of stem cutting or grafting a mammal was performed in Switzerland nearly 20 years after the carrot plant where mice cells were cloned. Later, in 1997, Dolly the sheep’s mammary cells were cloned (Lee). This was a major success for science because it was the first time an adult cell was used in which results in a clone of the previous generation of the plant and is still a method used today. It wasn’t until 1958 when modern cloning began with a carrot and in 1964 when scientist John Gurdon started the beginning of animal cell cloning of toad tadpoles. The first successful clone of embryonic cell. After scientists gained a greater knowledge of the process of cloning, they realized that it could possibly be used to benefit the world. In 2001, the first endangered species, the bull gaur, was cloned, and in...
In recent years our world has undergone many changes and advancements, cloning is a primary example of this new modernism. On July 5th, 1995, Dolly, the first cloned animal, was created. She was cloned from a six-year-old sheep, making her cells genetically six years old at her creation. However, scientists were amazed to see Dolly live for another six years, until she died early 2005 from a common lung disease found in sheep. This discovery sparked a curiosity for cloning all over the world, however, mankind must answer a question, should cloning be allowed? To answer this question some issues need to be explored. Is cloning morally correct, is it a reliable way to produce life, and should human experimentation be allowed?
I believe that the most important thing in teaching and learning is to insure the future success of the students. That’s why I am committed to placing the needs of the learner at the centre of everything I do. My teaching goal is to link course performance with the development of general learning skills, general chemical science skills, and specific subject matter skills.
The name of this incredible book is The Cartoon Guide to Chemistry by Larry Gonick and Craig Criddle. This book is published by HarperCollins Publishers Inc in 2005. It contains of 244 pages of pure knowledge of chemistry. There are many genres of this book, but the ones that stand out are mathematics, science, and humor. This book consists of the basics of chemistry needed throughout the year. It talks about anything you need to know from the size of a small atom to a huge experiment leading to many new discoveries.
The history of chemistry dates back to the time of ancient history to now. Ancient civilizations used technologies that would eventually form the basis of the various branches of chemistry by 1000 BC. For example, they were extracting chemicals from plants to make medicines. The history of chemistry is intertwined with the history of thermodynamics. Chemistry is very important to our world today. Without it, we wouldn’t be near as advanced as we are. Let’s take scientists for example. The scientists at St. Jude children’s research hospital; everyday they are working to find the cure to various types of cancer by mixing different chemicals and making various compounds to somehow help all the children with the big C word today. Chemistry plays a big role in things we would never think of.
From the unit of chemistry in grade ten science, the students have learned many things from different types of elements in the chart all the way to how each element impacts the daily life each student or even adult lives in. Some of the things I as a student have learned include how to draw the different elements in a bohr rutherford diagram, balancing chemical equations, types of chemical reactions, and even information about the different types of acids and bases. Although there were many other things in the unit, these four definately helped me learn about chemistry in a more in-depth way, as well as teaching me something very new since these were some things a few of the students had never done in the previous years. Learning this in the classroom has really opened my eyes to the world in which we live in today, many times I leave the house on a cold day and as I look upon the cold water becoming ice or even the snow falling down, I know how it is happening, why it is happening, and I can even picture the molecules solidifying as we had seen in class with many different diagrams.
Another concern that some students might have is communication. Some students might not need to have a teacher in front of them and teach the course material to them, to whereas some students might need the te...
Today, we have made strides in improving our education system in our schools. Yet, we are facing similar problems and perhaps even worse when teachers are rushing their students through their curriculum without taking the time to encourage and support them to excel in their classes.
For centuries, many scientists and researchers have pondered on the idea of combining two or more substances together to create something new. These explorations have led to the idea of what kind of reactions would occur when diverse elements are combined. This is a concept known as chemistry, a part of science that corresponds with how matter is created from different properties and the process it goes through to create a new substance. Chemistry is a scientific concept that is used in everyday life and is a crucial part in the development of new technology and substances that allow today’s quality of life. The use of chemistry branches off into many different routes, including medical related fields, agriculture, and even in weapons of