Student Malachemism #7
Wednesday, December 16th, 2009Didn’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.]