Blog Reflection 10/25/2013

    At the beginning of the week, my schedule was jammed with tests and projects. I had a math test on Monday, a chemistry test on Tuesday, and a 7 pager English project due on Wednesday. After football practices, I barely have any time to do any of my homework,so there was no way I could prepare for these tests and projects.Monday was mole day in chemistry class, we had cookies and hot chocolate which were amazing for the morning.Also we were assigned with a reading about paintball. Dr. F. instructed us to write a paper about the reading explaining polarity and I really no idea what I was supposed to write, but somehow when I was writing the paper. Ideas just kept flowing at me so I finished it in a really short time.It was really a great way to start off the week then I realized that I have too much homework on that day and I won't be able to finish them. So I decided to skip practice and went back home to study for my chemistry test on the next day. It all went really well.
    Since the past week, I've been starting to skype with my classmate and study together. It's really efficient and helpful. On the next day, I took my chemistry test. The test was a piece of cake. The free response was the easiest test section that I ever taken. The multiple choice, I find them relatively easy when I was taking it. For some reason, the hour right after the chemistry when I turned my chemistry test in. I was discussing the test problems with my classmate and all of a sudden. I realized all of the stupid mistakes that I did on the multiple choice section of the test. They were really stupid! I knew all of the concepts and idea but I guess I just had a "brain fart". I hate it when that kind of things happen. Somehow,all of my tests that I've taken during this trimester I do the same stupid things over and over again.It really makes me mad. I'm not exactly sure why but I think it's because of tiredness from football.
    After all these tests and projects early on the week. I was very tired and drowsy from the stress. During chemistry class on Thursday, we took the pretest. After I finished my pretest,I felt really weak and fatigue all of a sudden.I slept right after the pre-test.Later on that night, I played my last football game of the season. I was really tired and stressed from school.As a result, I performed pretty poorly and coach was upset with me during the game.All I had to say is life is full with memories and regrets.Thursday night was a regret for me. On Friday, we finished a pogil on ionic compounds and we were assigned a lecuture quiz online over the weekend. Everything was easy for me.

Reflective Blog 10/20/2013

    Over the past week, we've focused mainly about the electron domain geometry and molecular domain geometry. First, we had to became very familiar with drawing Lewis structure in order to get our basic foundation down. We then practiced on finding out the polarity and dipole moment. It's pretty simple overall, basically we just find out the lone pair of electron around the central atom, then we can figure out how the atoms in the molecule are bending. Therefore it allows us to know which way the dipole moment is going by finding out the polarity bond between the outer atom to the central atom and which way they are pointing.  
    We spent about two days worth of class time doing both the balloon and gum drops activities, basically building a molecule ourselves. The balloons simply represent and explain the electron domain geometry, as well as the gum-drops activity shows us a visual representation of the molecular domain geometry. Later on the week, Dr. Finnan instructed to do the WebMo program which is simply a computer program that draws the dipole moment and shows the space filling molecule for us. It was a lot of fun! I enjoyed it a lot with the program because you get to physically handle the atoms yourself. We were also assigned to do the HotPot quizzes over the weekend, as well as finishing up the lab report for the WebMo. At that point, I was still very confused between the difference between the electron domain geometry and molecular domain geometry. As a result, on Saturday, I spent almost the entire day searching for online resources and struggling on the quizzes. I still am a little bit confused on some of the concepts but I am a lot better at it now since I spent pretty much the entire weekend studying for chemistry. The WebMo report took forever to finish. I spent about almost 5 hours trying to figure things out on Sunday for the lab report. It's a really simple concept, but the report asks you for a lot of things to do, such as drawing the Lewis structure, which means you have to draw the Lewis structure physically by hand. Then take photos of each one of them, edit, and post them unto your data table. It's really annoying. The most difficult part was typing the paragraphs for all of the thirteen molecules. I'm pretty positive about all of my concepts and answers, but it's just very exhausting trying to explain them typing thirteen paragraphs in a row. Finally, I even had difficulty converting my computer file so overall my entire weekend was taken away by chemistry.
    I also have a math test tomorrow and an English project due on Wednesday, but I have not even started it because I was planning on finishing them up over the weekend then chemistry became a struggle to me. Everything to me right now is just a hassle. I am taking the ACT as well on Saturday. I have no time to study for it and any of my other classes. It really sucks. The good thing is that this week is actually the last week of football, which means by the time this week is over. I finally can have time to come home before night and finish up my studying for school.  

Blog Reflection 10/13/2013

   Over the week, we've done many moodle quizzes and lots of class discussion about the Lewis structure including hypervalency. We also went over the polarity in the shape of our molecule. I find the polarity overall easy, basically if there's a lonely pair then it would "bent" the shape of the molecule due to the change in repulsion. There was also another note on the bond strength, length, and order. Basically, these laws are all based off from the Coulumb's law. As the length of two nuclei increases, the force of attraction decreases so the force of repulsion would be greater because the electrons of the atoms. Also, all of the elements in period 3 or greater can have more the eight electrons around the central atom because of the empty d orbital available for them. Specifically for Boron and Beryillum, the two special cases where boron can only have three covalent bond and beryllium can form two covalent bond.

   I think all of the notes were easy to understand once I am used to what I am doing, but honestly I find the lecture videos extremely hard to interpret because there really that much step-by-step examples shown in the video. In the video, it talks a lot about the theories and laws using these fancy and complicated words, especially in an online setting where students can’t ask about their confusions of the video and everything goes in a really fast paste. So I find it difficult to understand the lecture videos sometimes whereas if the teacher discusses the notes in the classroom, students are able to have a chance to ask questions on the things that they don’t fully understood. This is also the reason why some of the moodle quizzes took me a while to finish and fully understood the material. I find the whiteboard discussions in class very interactive and helpful to my learning style.

Other than that, it's been a great week in fact. I still cannot believe we are halfway done with the trimester. I really need to pick up my grades though. I guess this is the reason why people say junior year is so stressful because all of the stuff just comes on you all at once. Where in one hand, you have all of these extra-curricular activities and the other hand, you have an extra amount of work and studying you have to do for school. Especially the fact that, I'm taking the ACT in less than two weeks puts me onto an enormous amount of stress. I am already lacking a lot of sleep and a little behind in some of my other classes with the fact that I have not yet started my studying for the ACT. I think I'll just have to see how it goes and practice a couple more times. I am really jealous now of the middle school life, no stress and no worry. It's all part of growing up.

Reflective Blog 10/6/2013

    It's been a good week. It all went smooth in all of my classes the past week. We went over the hypervalency theory, where if the central atom is greater or in the third period of the periodic table. The central atom is allowed to have more than eight electrons in its shell due to the empty d-orbital. On the moodle, we also learned about bond order and strength. It's interesting to know the reason why two of the same charged atoms can join together. The reason is that the force of attraction is greater than the repulsive force due to the attraction between the nucleus to the valence electrons overcoming the force of repulsion. We also learned that as bond length increases, the bond strength goes up and vise versa. On the other hand, as bond length increases, the strength decreases. According to Couloumb's law, as distance between two atoms increases, the attraction decreases due to the further distance between the electrons of the two atoms. Coloumb's law explains the relationship between bond order, distance, and strength. By knowing the law, it helps memorizing the relationship and make everything more self-explanatory.
    We also did our second lab of the year as well. This time, we used the colorimeter to measure the mass percent of copper presented in a brass screw. At the beginning of the lab, I really had no idea what I was doing because the procedure was very wordy and confusing. Dr. Finnan on the day before the lab told us to draw a pictograph of the procedure, which is pictures of each steps of the procedure. I didn't know what a pictograph was so I simply summarized the entire procedure using almost the entire page of the lab notebook. The procedure was very complicated and made no sense to me until I saw the my lab partner's pictograph. It was my own fault not following the instruction, but at least now I know what a pictograph is and I won't make the same mistake again in the future. Through out the lab, everything went pretty smooth but the data results were wrong for my group, I guess it all comes down to knowing the procedure well enough before performing a lab. I learned that from now on, I really need to know what I am doing before a lab. I can't just show up to a lab without knowing what I am doing.
    The other exciting thing that I learned was knowing how to use a pipette filler. It's pretty similar to using a micropipette. I learned how to use a micropipette from the health and medicine magnet. I enjoy using laboratory equipment. They are really fun to play with and more importantly needs to be accurate and precise. I personally think that I am pretty good at collecting data dealing with laboratory equipment. Lastly thing that I enjoyed through out the week was that our football team had finally won the city of Ann Arbor for the first time in the history. We beat both Pioneer and Huron which was pretty exciting in my own opinion.