kwigibo

One of my major complaints with chemistry, and physics, in high school was that we were told a lot of the time that things we were taught were not precisely true, but in reality much more complicated.

Incidentally i failed chemistry in high school, although i found it much easier to understand, and more interesting than physics, which i passed. I guess i gotta chem brain, because i took chemistry 1 last year in uni, and in spite of my failure to attend lectures more than 5 times in the semester, only once lasting the whole lecture while paying attention, not attending tutes at all, and only studying the night before exams, i managed to pass quite easily.

Chemistry did have a pattern for me, but seeing as how much rounding off went into the periodic table, and how so many other labels sacrificed accuracy for convenience, i've learned not to depend on my pattern

CodeMason

I find chemistry to be remarkably easy, but that's just because I have a great deal of interest in it. I also find math somewhat hard, because I lack any real interest.

kwigibo

In here lies the secrets of the universe

Coragyps

kwigibo - You bring up a very good point. I found that the first two years of undergrad chemistry was almost entirely generalizations and oversimplifications. The last two years was more nearly the straight stuff. Then grad school was primarily unlearning the first two years, or more precisely, learning the billions of exceptions to the "rules" you start with.
I don't think chemistry is all that hard to understand, except for the parts that that devilspawn bastard J Willard Gibbs had anything to do with!

Quetzal

I love chemistry. I have absolutely no understanding of how it works. OTOH, chemists make so many wonderful substances that at one time in my career I used to reduce various objects to their constituent parts with loud, satisfying booms. What's not to like?

Do not wish to be associated w/ II

I loved the beauty of chemistry. The way everything came together. I also had good teachers, who clearly also saw that beauty. Up until sixth year at high school. We had this teacher who was a year away from retirement. He had gone into teaching when his job in industry went belly up. The man shouldn't have been a teacher- he had NO interest in teaching and no appreciation of the misunderstandings and conceptual problems that students can develop.

Up until then Chemistry was laughably easy, after that time it became a dull chore and I detested it. That's what made it hard- my lack of interest, due in part to an incompetent teacher. I only got an A in that class 'cos I actually worked my backside off at home.

siirzm

As a physicist-in-training, I have to contest this. First, physics solves much more than one-electron hydrogen. That's not even the only real system that we can solve analytically--triplet Helium is a bit of a bitch, but doable and done. Second, ab initio(first principles) calculations do _not_ use any information from a chemist, and are much more accurate in general than the ad hoc rules that 'keen observations' produce.. There are a lot of situations, though, where the situations are very complicated, and chemists can be very helpful, but when you start involving transition metals, heavy ions, etc, things tend to fall apart..

L

LianaLi

<blinks> Wow, I've got alot to look forward to, don't I? Just a little biochem major here, in my second semester of organic chem. I'm three days into the semester, and so far, spectroscopy is making sense... But I'll keep my fingers crossed.

I think alot of why chemistry is so hard to understand is the quality of the teachers. I had decent teachers in high school, who were very good at encouraging students who were interested. We got to run demos, do the experiments, host them in front of crowds, ect. My personal favorite was the teacher who sat and let me burn various chemicals in my free time to see which colors they would burn, to "ascertain" which ones would be the most showy in the demos. Copper burns green, btw. Mmm, pyrotechnics...

On the flip side, I've also had professors who were safe alternatives to sleeping pills that taught class. Warning, do not carry around heavy text books around these guys. I made the mistake of taking an organic chem class with just such a professor and failed. There are also professors with too high expectations for students. Please, please, please, when teaching second semester of intro chemistry, do not expect your students to be able to intergrate Schroediner's equation, when most of your students are learning what the hell an intergration is. I'm dead serious. He had a question like that on his exams. The only reason I got points on that exam was because I'd taken calculus in high school. Bad professor!

On the other hand, I've also had a fantastic professor who was very enthusiastic about teaching, and taught well. If I'd studied a little bit harder, I might have gotten an A. Anyways, he did a good job of outlining which basic principles were important to know, and built up from there. His mantra was "where are the electrons?" and worked from there. He could explain every problem, practically, by falling back on that single principle, that one needs to know the rules that dictate where electrons will go to form or break bonds. Marvelous professor.

On the flip side, I also think all this stuff is so darned interesting. In lecture today, he related NMRs to the MRIs used in hospitals today, and I was hooked. Same principle, different powers of "magnifcation" or field strength, and wham! I was hooked. I love practical applications.


-Liana