Chemistry, Computing, and Whatever

Chem 111 for January 29

It's the end of January and time for me to proclaim the importance of the balanced equation. They're really, really important. I really like balanced equations. Everything we do in this part of Chem 111 comes back to the balanced equation as the fundamental summary of a chemical reaction. As Neil says, "It's all one song."

CMIT 140 for January 29

Last time, we discussed how an image could be represented as an array of pixels without really defining those terms in details. Today, we put a few more words to those concepts to the point where we could start writing expressions and manipulating images.

CMIT 140 for January 28

Thanks to Chris and Ron, we had a JDK for today's class, and that made it much easier to have students write and compile methods, the primary topic for last Monday's (and now for today's) class.

Chem 111 for January 27

Today was all about the balanced equation. What I try to stress is that equations (really any kind of equations) are sentences. So when we write

2CO(g) + O_²(g) --> 2CO₂(g),

we're really stating that

"2 molecules of CO combine with 1 molecule of O₂ to form two molecules of CO₂."

or

"2 moles of CO combine with 1 mole of O₂ to form two moles of CO₂."

Chem 400 for January 27

The great thing about the alumni panel is, first, that we get to connect with some of our former students and second, that we get a sense of how their Guilford education them in their current ventures. We even think the current students gain something from it. And it never hurts when they all talk about the value of presentation skills given that the first presentations are next week.

AI-AL for January 26

The beginning of this course is always hard because there's that two week gap between the first and second meeting. The individual meetings with students during this time that I started last year help provide some continuity. And it's great to talk with everyone, especially since I've only known four or five of the students before I started this class.

In the class itself, we covered the large chunk of reading that we've done since the beginning of the semester. That's problematic because there are so many ideas and examples to cover. While I have some goals in mind, I mostly try to act as a guide pointing us in a reasonable direction. As Kelly keeps noting, too much control sometimes doesn't get you to a desirable conclusion.

CMIT 140 for January 26

The best laid plans...

Both Chris and I were absolutely convinced that a JDK was on all the student computers in our classroom, but somehow it was only on the teacher's workstation. So having them write and compile a method really wasn't going to work that well. We have a plan--Chris has asked IT&S to get the JDK on those systems--and a backup plan--we've stored enough of the JDK in a share so that DrJava can work, so students only need to access the share. On Wednesday, we'll then return to giving the Turtles new capabilities by writing methods for them. And we'll finally get to manipulate pictures.

The result was everyone got to start the quiz earlier than we planned and leave early as well. Not as much fun as we intended, but at least we'll see how well everyone's doing on the basic concepts.