Milwaukee Time Lords Blog

Didn’t get enough of that last post. Here’s more! The Doctor would be ashamed of these students! (Or how NOT to qualify for the role of the Doctor’s assistant.)

STUDENT MALACHEMISMS #7

Here is another set of actual quotes from chemistry student exams, homework, and lab reports. [Again, my comments to myself are in brackets.]

 

Q: Give the name for the following elements:
   V (vanadium)
vanilla         [Sorry, not an element.]
vitamin       [Are you joking?]
valium        [The calming element.]
vanium       [They make vans out of it.]
venerium    [Gives you a sexually transmitted disease.]

 

   Sn (tin)
sandium     [What sand is made of.]
standous    [Element that never sits down.]
sinium        [The evil element.]

 

   Si (silicon)
sillium        [The silly element.]
silicious     [It's delicious!]

Rubbing alcohol is used as a tropical antisceptic.
[No, the tropical antiseptic is rum.  Have enough and you won't feel a thing.]

The specific heat of a substance is how many jewels it takes to heat the substance. 

[Diamonds are a substance's best friend.  That's *Joules*, a unit of heat.]

 

Q:  How do you make a supersaturated solution?
A:  You make a supersonic solution by adding too much solid to the solvent

but be careful it can be broken easily.
[You heat the solution, dissolve more solid, then cool slowly.]

 

Q:  What is the specific heat of a substance?
A:  It’s the value that I used in the equation.  [What equation?]
A: The total amount of heat in a sub.  [They toast subs at Subway now.]

 

The sample is irradiated with UZ light.  [From the Wizard of Uz? 

Does UZ stand for "ultrazippy"?]

 

The liquid mixture is poured into a separatory funnel and the querulous layer drained out.
[I had to think about this one.  "Querulous" means "peevish; frequently expressing a complaint or grievance".  In all of my years of teaching chemistry, I have never had a chemical solution complain.  The word is *aqueous* layer, which means a water solution.]

 

The percent yeild was less than 100% because the equation didn’t react.

 

The unknown liquid was not very density.

 

Q:  Why was salt added to the solution?
A:  It makes it more possible for water more accurately.  [huh?]

 

Add 20 mL of a statuated sodium chloride solution.
[Statuated?  Made into a statue?  That's *saturated*.]

 

The fumes in this lab were very fowl smelling.  [Smelled like chicken?]

 

Turpentine did not dissolve in the water because they were not combatable.
[Pacifists never dissolve.  *compatible*]

 

When the cap is removed from the soda, you release all the Co² crammed into the soda. 

[Cobalt squared?  That's *CO2*.]

 

Q:  Name three solutions found in your home.
A:  Blecch tea and Liquid Plummer.
[Really bad tea and Christopher Plummer?  Do you mean bleach?]

 

Q:  When a solution forms, where do the ions or molecules of solute go?
A:  They make new molecules.

[They get pregnant and have baby molecules?]
A:  When you dissolve something, the molecules of water are pulled apart.
[Hulk smash water molecules!]
A:  They go into the air.  [They escape?]
[Answer: They go between the molecules of solvent.]

 

The solution will seperate into layers if left idol.  [American Idol?]

 

The solution is hearted until it comes to a boil.  [All you need is love.]

 

Q:  Suppose you had a 10% salt solution.  How could you increase the percentage to 12% without adding more salt?
A:  Place the salt into less water.
[Hmm, travel back in time and decide to use less water in the first place.  That's a unique answer.  Answer: Evaporate some of the solvent until concentration is 12%.]

 

Q:  A lollipop left around for a while becomes sticky.  Why does this happen?
A:  It becomes unbalanced.
[No, children who eat too much candy get a sugar rush and become unbalanced.
Answer:  The lollipop is a supersaturated solution (more solute than is normally stable) and when exposed to water, the unstable structure begins to break down.]

 

Melting is a change of state of matter solid to liquid by adding heast.
[Is that heat or yeast?]

 

Fish donut remove the oxygen atoms from H2O.  [Fish eat donuts?]

  

Students wrote papers based on an American Chemical Society talk “Molecules to Mozzerella: The Chemistry of Cheese”:

 

Cheese making is a long process.  First you have the cow.
[You have to give birth to the cow yourself?  No wonder it takes so long.  Actually, first primitive organisms had to evolve for millions of years into mammals to make the cow.  The process takes even longer than you thought.]

 

Milk is pasturized so all the unwanted bacteria are killed of.
[Killed of what?  The milk is put out to pasture?]

 

The presentation started by the speaker having a cow.
[Bart Simpson: "Don't have a cow, man."  He showed a picture of a cow.]

 

The circumstances involving the cow are far from simplistic.
[What trouble's old Bessie got herself into now?]

 

The agging room is where cheese is put to age.

[I want to know where the *youthing* room is.]

 

Cheese making endures some meticulous but ends with time consuming steps to induce a flavored delight.  [huh?]

 

The perception of cheese as a large produced food is somewhat unapparent but should be appreciated as a form of art.  [Cheese sculptures?]

 

The smell of the cheese can be measured with a gastromeatograph.
[Cheese contains meat?  That's a *gas chromatograph* which separates
and measures the amounts of different gases in a vapor mixture.]

 

A soft cheese known as Kamelbear cheese smells like stinky feet.
[That's what you get when you cross a camel with a bear.  *Camembert*]

 

The pie curd is mixed in stainless steal bowls.
[The bowls are stolen?  There is a lemon curd pie and a cheesecake, but what is pie curd?]

 

The speaker informed us that it is impossible to make cheese from human breast milk.  Otherwise there would be many hungry babies.
[Am I the only one who finds that a bit creepy?]

 

Starter cultures play an important roll in the production of cheese.
[Cheese tastes good on rolls.]

 

Some semi-soft cheeses are mold ripened like stilton or rotford.
[Yes, mold leads to rot, but the name is *Roquefort*.]

 

The speaker’s intention was to impact into us the process of cheesemaking.
[He had a powerful left hook.  Pow! Whack! Cheddar!]

 

If Swiss cheese is made to quickly it will explode.
[Used by all the best cheese suicide bombers.]

 

The block of cheese is cut into peaces.
[And that's how the Great Cheese War ended.]

 

Once again Milwaukee Time Lords member, Jay Badenhoop presents us with more real samples of student answers to science questions. I include everything in Jay’s email to me, including the amusing disclaimer.

Here is another set of actual quotes from chemistry student exams, homework, and lab reports.

These are presented anonymously so no students were embarrassed (though maybe they should be).

[Again, my thoughts to myself are in brackets.]

 

On a 3-D molecular model-building exercise:

There is a symmetry plane between the center carbon atom.  [Do you know what "between" means?]

 

Q: When you change to the other chair conformation [of dichlorocyclohexane], are the chlorine atoms now axial or equatorial?
A: They’re trans.  [That wasn't one of the choices!]
Q: Now move one chlorine atom from carbon 2 to carbon 3.  Are the chlorines cis or trans?
A: They’re axial.  [D'oh!]
[On his tax forms, where it says "married, divorced, or single?", he answers "yes".
On my tax forms I select the option "Married filing double jointed, nudge nudge say no more!".]

 

Do not get benzoic acid in your eyes or it will cause digestive track irritation.  [Did you swallow your eyes?]

 

Inhaling benzoic acid may cause respiratory tract infection.  [No, it is a powder, not a bacterium.]

 

Insert the sample tube into the hating element.  [Make love not hate.]

 

        Part C: Indentation of an Unknown Solid.  [It is already indented - see?]

 

There was a lot of error due to missing the begging and end of the melting range.

[If the melting range begs, they put it out of its misery.  Don't miss it!]

 

The appartus was too slow and drug out the whole experiment.  [Maybe it was high.]

 

We will find the solubility of a coefficient in water.  [A coefficient is a number.  You mean you can dissolve numbers in water?  I think you mean "find the solubility coefficient".]

 

The mixture is shaked.   [No.]
The mixture is shook.    [No, try again.]
The mixture is shooked.  [No.]
The mixture is shooken.  [Still no.]
The mixture is shucken.  [Nope, you're getting colder.]
The mixture is shucked.  [No, you shuck corn, not mixtures.]
The mixture is shaken.   [Finally one person got it right!]
[Das Mischung ist geschücken, yavoll, mein Herr!]

 

Make sure you open the top between shakies or it might explode.  [Jinkies!]

 

You have to open the bottom because the pressure in the mixture has to relieve itself.

 

The benzoic acid was not quit pure enough.  [You shouldn't quit.]

 

My melting point was too high.  It must of been my equipptment.  [Or your spelling.]

 

The layers were easy and easy to see.  [Yeah, feelin' easy...]

 

Q: Why should you not use a bunsen burner to evaporate ether from the benzoic acid solution?
A: The flame could ignite the ethanol.  [Last time I checked, ether and ethanol were two different substances.]
A: Because it would burn the benzoic acid down.  [The big bad wolf burned it down.]
[Real answer: The ether is highly flammable!]

 

If you overheat the solution, something bad will happen.

[Can you be any more vague?  You'll upset the karma of the universe, man.]

 

Q: What could cause the recovery of benzoic acid to be less than 100%?
A: A mistake.  [You mean like taking this class?]
A: Some could have been lost when it was put on a watchglass and kept in my drawer.
[Alakazam, benzoic acid vanished!  It's magic!  Maybe the drawer has a trap drawer.]

 

The density of the object is its density.  [I yam what I yam.  Master of the obvious.]

 

The density is less dense than the density it is floating in.  [Huh?]

 

Water always has a density of 1 even if you have a lake.  [But not if you have a pond?]

 

Density is all ways constant.  [No, some times it deep ends on temperature.]

 

A psychometer is used to measure density.
[No, a *pycnometer* is used to measure density; a *psychometer* is used to measure insanity.]

 

It doesnt mater how much watter you put in the graduated cylinder.  [The t wandered.]

 

A 50 mL sample of ether is wadded to the funnel.  [Like a wad of cotton? added?]

 

I measured the volumn of the column.

 

Q: Why does a steel bar sink, but a steel ship floats?
A: Because the ship is on the ocean.  If you take a cruise, you feel happy and more buoyant so the ship floats.

 

The release of clouroflourocarbons caused depletion of the ozone lawyer.  [Ozone lawyers only take cases in the upper atmosphere.  We already have too many lawyers; it wouldn't hurt to deplete a few.  Clouroflourocarbons are baked with flour and "clour"?  It's spelled

"chlorofluorocarbons".]

 

Global warming causes floods and droughts that kill everything in it’s awake.

[Then go back to sleep.  It was all a bad dream.]

 

The media creates excitements and false postulations from the population.

[I thought you get false postulations from a bad pregnancy test.]

 

The media sometimes uses only a portion of the data witch gives erroneous results.

[And it uses witchcraft to make up the rest.]

 

If we reverse global warming, then we’d have global cooling and the media would thrive on stories about that.  [Sad but probably true.  Students sure don't trust the media.]

 

We humans have put a dent in the plant life on earth.

[Don't worry, we have auto insurance for that.]

 

Global warming will raze the water level of the earth.

[Don't worry, we can use a razor to shave it down again.]

 

If we don’t do something about global warming, it will have a snowball effect.

[Don't worry, the snowballs will make it cooler.]

 

Jay Badenhoop

 

No trees were killed in the sending of this message.
However, a large number of electrons were terribly inconvenienced.

Here’s our next installment of our member Jay Badenhoop’s actual answers from actual students taking an astronomy test.  Some are various answers given to short answer questions.  Others are definition of terms.  The teacher (Jay) gives his comments and thoughts located in brackets just after the student answers.

If you know of any other sites or collections like this, please share.

STUDENT ASTRONOMISMS #5

These are actual homework and exam answers from Astronomy students.

What were they thinking?

Q:  Why did Ptolemy include epicycles (smaller circles) in the planets’ orbits in his theory of the Universe?
A:  He had to think of a way or else the planets would just be floating out there in space aimlessly.
A:  The Earth has its own bicycles, so the other planets had to have something.
[Made by Schwinn?]

Q:  Why must astronomers and geologists study extraterrestrial bodies to learn about the first billion years of the solar system?
A:  Extraterrestrial bodies show the difference between humans and aliens and how they’ve survived.
[No, not that kind of body!  You've been watching too many documentaries about UFOs on the Discovery Channel. And who do you mean survived, the humans or the aliens?  The aliens survived Roswell?  They walk among us! Call NASA!  The answer is that Earth is too geologically active, and even the oldest Earth rocks are not that old.]

constellation - one of 88 acres into which the sky has been divided there in.
[Green Acres?]
latitude - the degrees norgh or sound of the equator.  [Come on, use spell check already.]

Stars that are slosher to the horizon twinkle more than those over head.
[They're drunk?  I think she meant *closer*.]

Star charts are used to indentify the stars and planets.  [Indentify?  Sounds like a word George Bush made up.  I have to indentify my paragraphs.]

Q:  Why is the Earth divided into time zones instead of the entire planet having the same time?
A:  Without time zones we wouldnt be able to determine when the date changes and time would stop.

plate tectonics - theory of the Earth’s crust with plates moving because of rumblings beneath.  [I had rumblings beneath once, when I ate Texas chili.]

continential drift - The continents move in slow motion.  [instant replay]
continental drift - the continentals are gradually moves from its initial dwelling.  [huh?]
lithosphere - layer of the Earth composed of the curst and upper montel.
[It's cursed?  Montel Williams, the talk show host?  It's *mantle*.]
mantle - the layer of rock lying next to the core  [...or the *liar* of rock *laying* next to the core.  It just lies there.  Maybe it's dead.]

Q:  What is the source of heat and how is heat generated in the Earth’s core and mantle?
A:  Radioactive maternal in the earths interior.
[The Earth is having a radioactive baby?]

Q:  What are the layers to Earth’s atmosphere?  Which layer(s) contain(s) ozone?
A:  Earth’s One Atmosphere this is the first atmosphere.  The Troposphere is the weather atmosphere.  Above the Troposphere is the Stratosphere and mesosphere is the Ozone atmosphere.  [huh?]

Geothermal energy is a tapped energy source that is overflowing in some arrears.
[Overflowing in the rear?  Earth has a big booty?]

crater - a dent in the moon.  [A crater is usually a bit more than a dent!  I hit the Moon with my Buick and dented it.  I hope it has insurance!]
libration - apparent slight turn off the Moon.
[You turned the moon off?  That's turn *of* the Moon.  Effect by which we can see slightly more than half (59%) of the lunar surface even though the moon basically has one half that always faces us.]

sidereal month - the course it takes the moon to circular around the earth in a month’s quest.
[A quest?  What is it searching for?]
sidereal month - a month with respect to the side reals.
[Side rails for the handicapped?  Reminds me of the doctor who went out of business because the sign maker wrote, "DR. JOHNSON, THE RAPIST" instead of "THERAPIST".  A sidereal month is the time it takes the moon to orbit the Earth with respect to the stars, which is 27.3 days.]

Eclipses can occur only when the Sun, Moon, and Earth are in onion.
[Do you mean *union*?  What does that mean?  They have a threesome????]

Ingenous rocks are rocks that cooled from larva.
[*Igneous* rocks cooled from *lava*.]

Q:  How were the lunar maria [dark plains] formed?
A:  Through erosion.  [Huh?  Erosion from all those hurricanes they have on the Moon.]
A:  They were formed by ballistic lava that filled the crateors and caused spots on the moon.
[Ballistic, like from a gun?  Bang! Bang!  Call CSI to analyze the fragments.
I don't think any gun can reach that far.  No, that's *basaltic* lava flows.  Basalt is solidified lava.  And what kind of spots, acne?  Use Moonasil.]

The three Apollo 11 astronauts were:  Neal Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins.  Neal and Buzz walked on the Moon and made Mike stay in the shuttle.
[He was a bad boy.  Punishment was harsh in those days.  The moon landing was in 1969 and the shuttle wasn't put into service until 1981.  He had to wait hanging in space for 12 years...]

Q:  What instrument was left on the Moon’s surface by the Apollo 11 astronauts?
A:  An American flag.
[Not an instrument.  Try again.]
A:  A 3-D holographic imaging unit.
[This was 1969!  They had just developed the color video camera!]
A:  A size mommeter.
[Used for measuring how big your mother is?  That's *seismometer* which measures vibrational waves generated by geologic activity.]

Q:  Which theories of the Moon’s formation have been rejected, which one has been accepted, and *why*?
A:  Fission of the moon from the Earth.  Rejected because Earth’s speed is not significant to lunch the moon.  [The Moon might make a good lunch if it really was made of swiss cheese.  It does have holes...]
A:  My theory is that when satan and 1/3 of the angels got killed out of heaven (Jesus said that He saw satan fall as lightening, so this was not plant object but satan and 1/3 angels which God cause lightening to strike the earth and this is where the heat impact came from. I can accept this theory because Genesis tells us that the earth was void. When satan and 1/3 angels got kick out of heaven is before God begun to create things on the earth. This is what is known as the early earth.   [What does this say about where the Moon came from?  Are you saying the Moon is Satan?  This answer kind of scared me.]

MTL member Jay Badenhoop, who was the first editor of our club newsletter, has contributed his first material for our blog.  It is answers to test questions given by students and one response to a cheater at the end.

I’m so sorry (as the Doctor sometimes starts with when about to do something awful to an opponent), but the following piece may cause you either pain or sadness for the state of our education of our children.

You can do your part to help by going back to the International Year of Astronomy post and lending your support to that effort.  (I think the Doctor would want you to do something.  He had something to say about “dumbing down” in the third season episode 42)

[Convention - italicized words are the teacher's comments; term or question in bold]

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MORE STUDENT ASTRONOMISMS
Set #4

Stonehenge - Three pillar of stones with a stone circle people stood on to studied the stars.

geocentric - in the middle of the Earth.

epicycle - plants make small loops in their obits around the sun.
[The plants are dead?  Did you water them?]

ellipse - a cone plane passed through the side of the cone, not bottom.
[The Conehead family flies in cone planes.]

perihelion - the very end of a speed of a point orbiting the sun by its body.
[Huh?  It's the farthest point of a body in its elliptical orbit.]

period of revolution - length of time it takes for a plant to have one full revelation.
[A giant psychic gardenia?]

light pollution - an axis of light in the sky.  [no, that's *excess*!]

light pollution - a lot of light.

wavelength - different distances appear as different colors.
[That's the principle of 3-D glasses.]

wavelength - the distance from crest to crest or through to through a wave.
[Er, that's *trough* ("troff") like what a cow eats from.  Here, try reading this "ough"t loud: "Though it ought to be bought, the tough calf with the cough thought it was through eating dough thoroughly enough at the trough."  There are at least five different pronunciations of "ough" in that sentence.  That's English for you!]

infrared light - light that is redder than red.  [*really* red!]

Doppler effect - something caused by Dopplers
[Be vewy vewy quiet, I'm hunting Dopplers...]

focal length - the length from the lens of a telescope to infinity.  [...and beyond!]

focal length - objects at infinity fall at a distance.
[huh?  Objects at infinity are closer than they seem.]

chromatic aberration - when light coming from a telescope makes you see rainbows.
[No, that's  a *mental* aberration.  It's when light of different wavelengths is focused to different points, so the colors appear blurred.]

focus - where light waves come to a focus.

Why are some wavelengths blocked from reaching the Earth’s surface?
Radiation is blocked from reaching the Earth’s surface.
[The last two from the "bleedin' obvious" school of astronomy.]

Info-red light is blocked by the O-Zone layer.
[The O-Zone is where the Wizard lives.]

Gumma rays are blocked by the Oziononic layer.

Which types of light in the electromagnetic spectrum are mostly blocked from reaching
the Earth’s surface by the atmosphere?
Opaque light is blocked from reaching the suns atmosphere.
[Did she think "opaque" is a color?  And confused the Sun with the Earth?]

Compare a refracting telescope to a reflecting telescope.
A: Reflecting telescopes have mirrors that magnatize light.  [I think she meant "magnify".]
A: Reflecting telephone use mirrors as the optics to focus and reflect light.
[And he uses the telescope to call his mother.]
A: The refracting telescope turns red light blue.  [It does?  Don't use it to look at traffic lights.]
A: The human eye is a refracting telescope.  A rearview mirror of a car is a reflecting telescope.  [Er, no. *Like* a telescope, maybe.]

Advantages of using the the Hubble telescope are as follows: saving money by limiting its ability to point at random positions in the sky; telescopes on Earth are limited but eh atmospheric “seeings;” the starlight is consentreated into smaller images with not amosheres above the telescope.  [Huh?]

How does light from a light bulb compare to that of natural light from the sun?
A: You shouldn’t look into the sun.  [But you *should* look directly into a light bulb?]
A: The wavelengths of the sun have more length then the light bulb.  [And they have less wave.]
A: Light from a light bulb is approx. 3000 K as opposed to the natural light of the sun which is approx. 5580 K.  [A light bulb is 3000 degrees, over half as hot as the sun?  Steel melts at around 1200 K.  The student's light bulb would melt the Earth's crust!]
A: A light bulb will become hot if left on for a long time, hotter than my fingers can stand so I cannot even imagine trying to change the sun right after it goes out.  [I sure hope this student was joking!]

Here is my answer to an unsuccessful cheater: “[Female student], the file you submitted for Activity #1.1 is a copy of Homework #1 (wrong assignment) submitted by [male student, her boyfriend] with his name on it!  You should do your own work.  I cannot accept this submission, so I must assign a score of zero.”  [Can you believe it?]

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