It's only the second week of school, we've already took a test and many other online quizzes. Through out the week, we learned mainly about molarity and concentration. At first, I was very confused about this unit because the one lectures were very boring from my perspective which causes me to not want to learn. Later on, we did a lot of calculations and mathematical formulas to figure out the unknown variable. We were given many questions and practices, especially homework which was very unpleasant personally. Near the end of the week, we were told there was a lab coming up so we had to do all these readings and procedures about the experiment.
Surprisingly, I enjoyed the lab a lot. Unlike the online lessons and quizzes, you gain experience not only with the studying materials but with the laboratory techniques and applying theories, along with formulas to solve real world problems. Our first lab in the class is basically finding out the concentration of a solution using a colorimeter. During the experiment, as a class, we came up with a beginning question and collected a class data so that we could make sure our measurements were correct. As we were doing the lab, the concepts about molarity and concentration became clearer to me. The idea of concentration is that as the amount of solution increases while the solute remains the same, the concentration decrease. A real life example would be like making lemonade, if the drink is too sweet you would add more water to bring down the taste or the concentration of the lemonade. Molarity is similar to concept of concentration but dealing with the number of moles of solute per liter of solution. Dr. Finnan instructed us to find out the mass of powerade and gatorade in grams after the lab, which was really what the whole lab is about, applying our knowledge into real life applications. I had no clue what we were doing at first, but later on the online lectures came into my mind. Then, everything became transparent, all we had do was really just to set up the equations and balance out the units. In the end, it was the lab that really taught me everything I need to know from this unit.
After this entire second week of school, although I was physically really tired and beat up. I learned how to be more organized with my schedule and take better notes in class. Lastly, advanced placement classes are really no jokes. It demands more work and concentration. My participation in class really wasn't that interactive at all. I think I can really do a lot better if I can concentrate more in class and do more work or practices after school. All of the new ideas I've learned from my chemistry class this week were pretty simple to me, but I just need to practice more with setting up formulas. In these couple quick days of school, my understanding and definition of hard work has really changed significantly, but I guess this is what part of growing-up is all about.
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