CH301 Random Musings, September 15, 2009 1. Cell phones and water and black body radiators. I don’t really like the fact that cell phone companies charge so much to replace cell phones. And I don’t like the idea of buying insurance on something as insignificant and unnecessary as a cell phone. But I am not a careful person, and so losing my cell phone has become a very common, and very expensive, way of life for me over the years. So I changed habits and these days I never let the phone out of my sight, even when I take my four youngest children swimming—which presents its own set of problems…. On four different occasions the last few years, my cell phone has ended up in the water—sometimes it is just me jumping into a pool with the cell phone in my pocket. Even when I am careful it doesn’t work, like the time the phone was ringing over on a chair by the pool, and evidently my three year old heard it, went and got it, and brought it to me (at least that is what I surmised when he started pointing to my phone sitting at the bottom of four feet of water.) I have since decided to not take it to the pool, but that didn’t stop it from ending up in the toilet one day. As you know, cell phones don’t work when they get wet. Now the average person would simply buy another phone, but not me, I am too cheap. I have already bought my older children their own replacement phones several times, and it is cost me a fortune to pay hard cash to send them both to college as well, so I think, “I bet I can save this wet phone.” Being a scientist, and well versed in the ways of the physical world, I decided to bake the phone in the oven at 150 degrees over night, and sure enough, in the morning it worked again, every bit of it. Which isn’t surprising to anyone who knows how the world works—we scientists occasionally do battle with the natural world and win. The only probably is that when it gets humid outside, or when the cell batteries run out of juice and the cell phone is powerless for a while, the phone needs to be baked again for a few minutes. For a while, baking my phone on a weekly basis was simply a part of my routine. Until things went a little awry. One morning, coming inside from working in the yard, I happened on the smell of putrid, acrid burning plastic, and sadly I learned that you can’t be too careful when you put cell phones into ovens, because my cell phone had fallen on top of a black body radiator that is hot enough to melt plastic even if the photons it is giving off are in the infrared region of the spectrum and not the visible region. Still too cheap to buy a new phone, I continued to use that phone till the end of the contract. It was a little worse for wear, and smelled really bad when you put your nose next to it. And while people could hear me because the receiver didn’t melt, the speaker kind of melted so I don’t really know what anyone was saying to me, not that it mattered much because I rarely listen to what people tell me anyway. 2. Quiz 1 results were very good, an average of 80 with only 12 of you not bubbling stuff in correctly. Now I want to tell you something that is going to really annoy you—despite being a very good average, as a class you have received the worst first quiz average in seven year. Every other class I have taught, for 7 years, earned a perfect 100% on the first quiz. And here is how— 3. For seven years my TAs have been incapable of actually administering the first quiz without screwing something up. Even Travis, as good as he is, failed in his first two years with me to actually produce and administer a quiz. And the neat thing is that this tradition of failure always found new avenues of incompetence—look at the reasons given to me by the TAs, simply a remarkable level in its creativity:2003 Didn’t get the quizzes into the printer queue 2004 Homework Service data base offline 2005 No scantrons with uteid available and can’t use SSN 2006 Only 350 copies printed—we still can’t find the other 150 copies 2006 Every version number was 001 2007 Quest software not yet ready to generate in class quizzes (Travis’s fault) 2008 No version numbers, uteid printed instead (Travis’s fault) So congratulations, you get the chance to start the course a full question behind!! Fortunately I have it on good authority you are the best class I have ever had, so this little hiccup, the actual administration of a quiz, isn’t going to impede your progress to the grade you want. 4. Fair questions on exams and quizzes—your rights: I always try to be fair about the questions I put on quizzes and exams. If you feel a question is unfair or misleading, by all means e-mail me and I will consider your concern. If I make a change it will be for the entire class. But please do not be frivolous about it. 5. It never stops--there is a quiz next week on Tuesday, September 22. It will be 6 questions worth 30 points total. It will be harder than the first quiz, with questions comparable to what you will see on the first exam. The questions are drawn from lectures 4, 5 and 6 and are of the following types: • Electronic configurations of atoms and ions • Calculating an ENC (effective nuclear charge) • Ranking periodic table properties: atomic radius, ionization energy, electron affinity, ionic radius • Ranking periodic table properties: atomic radius, ionization energy, electron affinity, ionic radius • Filled and half filled shell issues: Electronic configurations of transition metals and p1-p4 metal ions • Filled and half filled shell issues: the fine structure in IE and EA trends 5. A grand total of five people were at my office hour yesterday and it was a really a great learning experience. They are glad the rest of you didn’t come. But that is unfortunate—it suggests that you think that regular attendance at help sessions should only matter when there is a quiz or test. Be aware that my attitude toward a class when it comes to showing mercy in creating tests and assigning grades is directly proportional to the effort I perceive the class is making (and I can tell that by attendance at help sessions and academic communities.) You really don’t want me to end up annoyed at you lack of participation in these sessions. 6. This week my discussion sessions will be in my office because there is no quiz. Next week they will be in the classrooms because there is an upcoming
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