Aaaah! "Cho Hyeok" adds up to 23 as well!
Dec. 11th, 2003 07:17 pmSo, a new player has joined Nomicron - "Rubric". Is this Max? I don't know. I haven't asked him yet. Nakor seems to have lazed off again, leaving us with an unupdated Nomichess page and an unupdated Spellbook...
So it seems a bunch of the parents are going to get together to complain about Mr. Sokolewicz (including my mom). I've shown her his "notes", and I'm going to try to get a copy of the test...
Now, other news. Firstly, I am an armadillo cabbage. Secondly, you know those blue recycling bins? For whatever reason, today I was thinking about them and remembered seeing on those lists of "put in here" and "don't put in here", printing paper in the second category. Now this seemed rather strange to me, so I figured I should actually find one and see if it actually *was* listed as such.
I couldn't find one. Asking Katie and Joe where one was, I was told Dr. D's room and the Common Area. There actually was none in Dr. D's room. Dr. D didn't have any suggestions on where to find one, either. Chris said Mr. Mendelsohn's room. There was one, but there was also a meeting in there. So I tried the Common Area, only to find that the blue recycling bin was, in fact, behind the counter. I didn't feel like asking to look at the recycling bin, so I went in search of another one. Mrs. Dr. Crane didn't have any suggestions, nor did anybody else I asked (specifically most of my math class). Oh well.
Today in chemistry Mr. Dr. Crane introduced ΔG°=-RTlogK (although of course over there in the chemistry department they call it "ln" instead of "log" :) ). I objected quite a bit that this should properly be ΔG°=-RTlog(K/Q°); Dr. Crane, of course, completely ignored that. Sheesh. If you actually read the not-really-a-derivation-but-it-gives-you-the-idea that it has in Zumdahl (which I read the night before), it's pretty clear that it should actually be that. Why continue to spread confusion when it could so easily be resolved? Dr. Ostfeld actually didn't know how it worked! (Taking the log of K, since K is united, that is.) I mean, it's so simple to explain that you're actually taking the log of a ratio, *not* of K itself, and therefore not of a united quantity, but he didn't! Of course, these chemists go dropping the units on K as well, which really annoys me. "You know what your problem is, Harry? You can't stand a darn good approximation that works." - Dr. Crane. Of course, this quote shows that I actually *can* stand a good approximation, as that quote is one itself. :) This was what he said when I tried to convince him after class that he should explain that it's actually log(K/Q°). Largely true, actually, but what I *really* can't stand is ignoring units. Say you happen to like using, say, kPa, instead of atm? If you don't know the real equation, you'll get utterly confused - or, more likely, come to the conclusion that there is something special, something universal, about atmospheres and molar, and that these are some of those fundamental units of the universe which can be set to 1 without trouble. Having seen the equation before, but not having seen the derivation, I was half-convinced of that for a while. And yet, it seemed to me that there was something fundamentally wrong with that. And today I realize that yes, in fact, they *are* totally arbitrary. And *that* is what I really can't stand: arbitrarity.
</rant>
-Sniffnoy
--
"Some things sum to a larger value of zero than others."
-Tom "Tom" Harrington, rhod
So it seems a bunch of the parents are going to get together to complain about Mr. Sokolewicz (including my mom). I've shown her his "notes", and I'm going to try to get a copy of the test...
Now, other news. Firstly, I am an armadillo cabbage. Secondly, you know those blue recycling bins? For whatever reason, today I was thinking about them and remembered seeing on those lists of "put in here" and "don't put in here", printing paper in the second category. Now this seemed rather strange to me, so I figured I should actually find one and see if it actually *was* listed as such.
I couldn't find one. Asking Katie and Joe where one was, I was told Dr. D's room and the Common Area. There actually was none in Dr. D's room. Dr. D didn't have any suggestions on where to find one, either. Chris said Mr. Mendelsohn's room. There was one, but there was also a meeting in there. So I tried the Common Area, only to find that the blue recycling bin was, in fact, behind the counter. I didn't feel like asking to look at the recycling bin, so I went in search of another one. Mrs. Dr. Crane didn't have any suggestions, nor did anybody else I asked (specifically most of my math class). Oh well.
Today in chemistry Mr. Dr. Crane introduced ΔG°=-RTlogK (although of course over there in the chemistry department they call it "ln" instead of "log" :) ). I objected quite a bit that this should properly be ΔG°=-RTlog(K/Q°); Dr. Crane, of course, completely ignored that. Sheesh. If you actually read the not-really-a-derivation-but-it-gives-you-the-idea that it has in Zumdahl (which I read the night before), it's pretty clear that it should actually be that. Why continue to spread confusion when it could so easily be resolved? Dr. Ostfeld actually didn't know how it worked! (Taking the log of K, since K is united, that is.) I mean, it's so simple to explain that you're actually taking the log of a ratio, *not* of K itself, and therefore not of a united quantity, but he didn't! Of course, these chemists go dropping the units on K as well, which really annoys me. "You know what your problem is, Harry? You can't stand a darn good approximation that works." - Dr. Crane. Of course, this quote shows that I actually *can* stand a good approximation, as that quote is one itself. :) This was what he said when I tried to convince him after class that he should explain that it's actually log(K/Q°). Largely true, actually, but what I *really* can't stand is ignoring units. Say you happen to like using, say, kPa, instead of atm? If you don't know the real equation, you'll get utterly confused - or, more likely, come to the conclusion that there is something special, something universal, about atmospheres and molar, and that these are some of those fundamental units of the universe which can be set to 1 without trouble. Having seen the equation before, but not having seen the derivation, I was half-convinced of that for a while. And yet, it seemed to me that there was something fundamentally wrong with that. And today I realize that yes, in fact, they *are* totally arbitrary. And *that* is what I really can't stand: arbitrarity.
</rant>
-Sniffnoy
--
"Some things sum to a larger value of zero than others."
-Tom "Tom" Harrington, rhod
