Generating interest in weak acids We started a unit this week applying equilibrium concepts to acid base chemistry. To motivate this discussion, we used prompts to engage students in the critical thinking skills of problem solving and lab design. Apple juice and vinegar…
Blog Archives
Lewis Structure and Function
I wrote the following pre-lab activity as a practice for Lewis Structures and to use in conjunction with a great PhET activity. Enjoy!
An end and a new beginning…
Check out the prezi for a summary of our 2 week experiment You’ll find out what our students thought of the experiment. I hope you enjoyed it as much as we did and find their reflections helpful!
Posted in Advanced Chemistry, Multivariable Calculus
Chemistry of wet plate photography
Check out our Prezi of wet plate photography chemistry
Posted in Advanced Chemistry
The power of aggregation – part 2
In part 1, I argued that many of the most compelling processes that we observe in the world around us work according to a basic principle associated with aggregation. I will expand on this by writing a few lines that…
Posted in Advanced Chemistry, Multivariable Calculus
The power of aggregation – part 1
This is the information age, and sitting at the heart of the information expansion that has defined this age is a simple idea: aggregation. Swimming in all this information, will humans ever be able to reliably predict the future? And…
Posted in Advanced Chemistry, Multivariable Calculus
Engineering scientific discovery
I was recently listening to archived Radiolab episodes, and came across this story about Eureqa, a computer algorithm that looks for patterns in data sets. The amazing thing about this story is that the algorithm finds correlations and relationships between…
Tagged with: Algorithm, Artificial intelligence, Data set, eureqa, Google, Machine learning, Newton, Newton's laws of motion, Radiolab
Posted in Advanced Chemistry, Multivariable Calculus, Steven Strogatz
Posted in Advanced Chemistry, Multivariable Calculus, Steven Strogatz
Epic infinite imbalance problem!
I really can’t get enough of these puzzles. Thanks to Paul Salomon for describing them. Go check out his work over at Lost In Recursion if you haven’t seen it yet. I would love to see what kinds of puzzles…
Tagged with: imbalance problems, infinite imbalance problems
Posted in Advanced Chemistry, Multivariable Calculus
Posted in Advanced Chemistry, Multivariable Calculus
The number of photons ejected from the sun in a second
How many photons does the sun emit in a second? The following worksheet was used in companion with this post for chemistry students. Our chemistry class used the work of Brian Cox and (originally) John Herschel to determine the number…
Tagged with: Advanced Chemistry, Multivariable calculus
Posted in Advanced Chemistry, Multivariable Calculus
Posted in Advanced Chemistry, Multivariable Calculus
Creating a post with scientific/mathematic symbols!
“How do you create mathematical or scientific symbols in a WordPress blog?” you ask. It is perhaps simpler than you thought! If you are familiar with (or want to learn) , then you can do this easily. I have used…
Posted in Advanced Chemistry, Multivariable Calculus
harveyjohnson
scenic-science + thematic-mathematics | same 