i may just have had bad teachers but i to this day have no idea what chemistry at pre-university level were supposed to teach. the labs were all about watching things change, with no explanation as to why. and the theory parts were all about balancing reactions. none of it connected.
fck yea
Submitted 2 months ago by fossilesque@mander.xyz to science_memes@mander.xyz
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Comments
lime@feddit.nu 2 months ago
fossilesque@mander.xyz 2 months ago
Yea, this articulates my experience as well.
Saleh@feddit.org 2 months ago
You ought to get the balance right for things to change the way you like.
Titration is a great example of using the inverse. You get the colour by creating the balance. Then you can calculate the unknown side from the balance with the known side.
Now you can use the knowledge that your your base/acid is of a certain concentration to get the reaction you want to do right.
As for the specifics, once you get to organic chemistry in Uni it doesnt connect to make sense either, unless you really dive into the deep end of it.
fossphi@lemm.ee 2 months ago
Very similar to my experience. It was even worse for organic chemistry where they just parroted out the outcomes/mechanisms with not much explanation. But maybe it’s also difficult to explain chemistry without some solid physics prerequisites
isolatedscotch@discuss.tchncs.de 2 months ago
Yup, luckily in my case I got into amateur chemistry (tysm sciencemadness) but it pained me to see my friends not actually knowing anything and just memorizing everything by the letter
0101100101@programming.dev 2 months ago
amateur chemistry
So… cooking meth?
captainlezbian@lemmy.world 2 months ago
My high school chemistry teacher was a professional chemist working as a teacher so she’d be home when her kids got home, and yeah I think I had a different experience. Several of our labs were more thermodynamics related. One was to create a temperature based can crushing method. But yeah she’d ask us what we thought would happen and tell us to go figure out. That said we did have the “learn to titrate” labs too, but we were told that’s what was happening.
lime@feddit.nu 2 months ago
my first chemistry lab (like actual chemistry, rather than as part of the “sciences” subject) involved us mixing two components we were not given the names of in a test tube, then we would go out to the school yard and while we were holding the test tubes with tongs the teacher shoved a match into each of them to show the efficacy of the black powder we had just unknowingly made. there was so much glass everywhere.
like, it was cool, but i don’t think anybody learned anything from that other than how to make black powder, which i imagine most people with a dad learn at one point or another.
Fredthefishlord@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 months ago
AP chem courses had some small value. Frankly I think all of chemistry throughout all years of school would be better taught as a crash course in a year in Middle school, with a refresher in highschool… Then teach more bio instead, it’s more valuable to the everyman
Kroxx@lemm.ee 2 months ago
Quantitative analysis flashbacks form this, I learned the fastest way to figure out how much reactant you need to figure out the tipping point of the ph was to just run quickly adding large jumps of aloquates on the first attempt ,let it turn dark, then on the next one go ahead and add a safe amount of reactant I found from the first attempt then go super slow with the drip rate after. Was pretty consistently one of the first to leave lab
Tar_alcaran@sh.itjust.works 2 months ago
Micropipettes ftw!
Rai@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 months ago
using mouth pipettes for dimethylmercury
Tar_alcaran@sh.itjust.works 2 months ago
To quote an old teacher “a little benzene never killed anyone, and it’s great for cleaning lab tables”
Turned out that actually, he was half right.
BreadOven@lemmy.world 2 months ago
What about for a 20+ mL titration? Also how would you quantify the exact volume for the endpoint if it’s when the plunger is half depressed?
Fleur_@lemm.ee 2 months ago
Honestly titration in hs made me not like chemistry. Still think it’s fun to do improvised metal plating with a battery and some salt water though
GrammarPolice@lemmy.world 2 months ago
I still don’t know what titration was about. Only that the solution was supposed to either turn pink or orange in some cases💀🙏
wolframhydroxide@sh.itjust.works 2 months ago
Suppose you are trying to determine the concentration of a solution. You could try to boil off the water and figure out how much solid stuff is left over, but what if it’s a mixture, and you just want to know how much, for instance, “Hydrochloric Acid” is in the water. Or, alternatively, some chemicals (such as Hydrochloric acid) evaporate with the water. We’ll call this chemical of interest “Chemical X”
So, you need to know how much Chemical X is in your solution, but you can’t really easily separate it from the solution. What do you do? You Titrate! You find some other chemical that reacts with Chemical X, so that this new chemical (which we will call Chemical Y) will get instantly destroyed as long as there is still more Chemical X in solution. So, as long as there is more Chemical X in solution, the Chemical Y will get eaten up instantaneously, reacting with Chemical Y.
Finally, you just need to have some way of detecting whether any Chemical Y exists in the solution, since the moment you see it in solution, you know there’s no more Chemical X.
Now, you titrate: take a specific volume of your sample solution, and add a known concentration of Chemical Y, drop by drop. Once there is any chemical Y left over, you know you have found how much Chemical X was in the solution to start. Congratulations, you now know the concentration of Chemical X in the sample solution.
C126@sh.itjust.works 2 months ago
(Intro) This speech is my recital, I think it’s very vital To get it right, the endpoint’s white— Titrate! Titrate! Here we go!
(Chorus) It’s tricky to turn it white, to turn it white would be real tight Let’s titrate! Titrate! Titrate! Titrate! It’s tricky to turn it white, to turn it white would be real tight Titrate! T-t-t-titrate! Titrate!
(Verse 1) I set up in the lab, a burette in my hand A flask of acid, now add the base, it’s goin’ just as planned But if I go too far, then I will lose my star So I drop it slow, watch it flow, ‘til the pink is out that doh’!
(Chorus) It’s tricky to turn it white, to turn it white would be real tight Lets titrate! Titrate! Titrate! Titrate! It’s tricky to turn it white, to turn it white would be real tight Titrate! T-t-t-titrate! Titrate!
(Verse 2) In the lab, we gotta grab some phenolphthalein One drop too much, the shade will clutch, and wreck the whole routine! The pH curve is steeper when you’re near that equivalence point So add it slow—just one more drop mo’, and then we’re out this joint!
(Chorus) It’s tricky to turn it white, to turn it white would be real tight Let’s titrate! Titrate! Titrate! Titrate! It’s tricky to turn it white, to turn it white would be real tight Titrate! T-t-t-titrate! Titrate! Titrate!
(Outro) We don’t quit, y’all, keep that pipette Keep on drop-drop-drippin’ 'Cause this is it!
lewdian69@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Glorious
introvertcatto@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 months ago
Its not really hard how boring it is.
Clinicallydepressedpoochie@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Reverse titration?
bleistift2@sopuli.xyz 2 months ago
What a high it was when I did titration in high school and managed to get so close that the liquid appeared colorless unless you held a white sheet of paper next to it.
It was tinted, but just barely.
MajorMajormajormajor@lemmy.ca 2 months ago
The chosen one!
Lemminary@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Same, but my professor said I needed to keep titrating and that it needed to be a very specific light pink which she never bothered to specify in the entire semester. 🙃
sem@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 months ago
I did this once too I was using half drops with a DI water squirter to rinse them into solution
randint@lemmy.frozeninferno.xyz 2 months ago
I also managed to did that once, but after a while (20 seconds or so) the color started to fade and we had to add more, and overshooting miserably