Sunday, March 20, 2005
9:11 PM — Student Quotes (Continually Updated!)
Now continually updated! New at the top.
The Spring '05 installment of quotes from student HW and labs. I wonder what the students would think if they knew their most ... memorable ... work was making it to the web. I think I'm getting stupider.
The Spring '05 installment of quotes from student HW and labs. I wonder what the students would think if they knew their most ... memorable ... work was making it to the web. I think I'm getting stupider.
- "Conclusion: I think that this lab was pretty easy to understand." Hm, then explain to me why you got such a shitty grade.
- More kernels of wisdom--describing what happens inside a popcorn kernel as it pops. "Popcorn pops because for one the bag is closed so all the heat is bottled up inside. The pressure of the kernels is what makes them pop, like molecules bancing off walls. The volume of the bag is like the wieght there is only enough room inside for just the right amount of popcorn. The heat makes the temperatre inside the bag expand. So one was these hard small kernels is now light wieghted popcorn. The Ideal Gas Law Proves Popcorn." Whew, it's a good thing someone proved popcorn exists!
- "In this situation the volume in the bag stays the same because there is no water to measure it." So without water, there's no such thing as volume. Wow, I'm glad someone cleared up that misconception for me, I thought water was just a convenient tool to measure something that's always there!
- "Temperature is a measurement and can be a measurement of cold. Heat is not cold and has to do with heat fusion and other things, when temperature is just a measurement."
- "(Heat and temperature) are not the same thing because when we talk about heat it is the warmth of something or an area, and when we talk about temperature it is the warmth or coldness of something or an area."
- I gave the same question twice for homework in one class (define temperature vs. heat). The second time was AFTER I had already given correct answers for the first time. One student still wrote the following. "Temperatures and heat differ because temperature is something that is risen or fallen. The hottness of something makes the temperature go up and the colder something gets makes the temperature go down. Heat is something that is hot and could be humid. It can only rise unlike temperature that can flucktuate."
- "Convention means one molecule moves around, taking its energy with it." So convection is when a bunch of 30-year-old smelly hairy men get together and pretend to be elves?
- "We filled the cylinder with alcohol and dryed the outside the outside." Is the outside of the outside the inside?
- "The water and the alchole all look the same." Spellchecker apparently doesn't fix students' spelling errors, but it does make them more obvious to me.
- "How can a hydrometer be used to test the density to prove a liquid impure?" "First of you would need to know what the measurement of the desired element is. Next you would dunk the hydrometer into the eleged liquid..."
- "The probable sources are not really perfect when you put the table to zero." WTF?
- "In what units, if any, should specific gravity be expressed?" "Yes."
- "Describe a field that some consider a pseudo-science. What makes it scientific or unscientific?" "A field I can say that is pseudo science is estrology. To me it would be scientific because this field was tested by scientist and known to be true." TacoTortoise suggests estrology's the science of going into heat, while I say it's the study of the artist formerly known as Madonna.
- "Density is the amount or weight of something that is usually used to measure length, area, and volume. The units that are used for this may be grams." (emphasis added) "These are all different, and none of them are density."
