In the first section of this page, you will write a daily summary of that day's class. For example in your chapter 2 blog, your first entry should be titled 9/3/10. You should then write a one or two paragraph summary of that day's lecture, outlining the major points. In the second section, you are required to add two items (link to a website, video, animation, student-created slide show, student-created PowerPoint presentation) and one journal article pertaining to a topic in this chapter. A one-paragraph summary must accompany each item describing the main idea and how it applies to the lecture topic. Please see the PBWorks help guide for assistance embedding video and other items directly in the page. I will also produce a how-to video on using tables to wrap text around items and other useful tips. Please see the syllabus for organization and grading details.
A. Daily Blog
9/3/10: Friday was our first day of actual lecturing although it was mainly review. We learned about isotopes and how they can help detect cancer by using imaging. We also learned about the orbitals of atoms and how elements can be divalent, trivalent, tetravalent, and monovalent, depending on how many bonds they can hold. We learned about how a mole of any element must be equal to the same amount as 12 grams of carbon. I am still confused about this, however, and would like to go over it more thoroughly. We reviewed bonds and how strong they are, which I would like to go over more since they are brought up a lot in biology. Lastly, we reviewed electronegativity.
9/8/10: Wednesday we started class by having a poll through texting. I really enjoyed this because we are able to give answers anonymously and see what everyone else believed was correct. We talked more about bonds and how strong they were. Then we discussed characteristics of water, which really helped me with the homework and what caused the different characteristics for water. For example, even if the sand at the beach is burning your feet, the ocean could be very cold, because water holds a lot of heat. Because there are so many hydrogen bonds in water and heat is needed to break them, which will only slightly bring the temperature up.
Dr. Weber taught us about solvents and why water is such a good universal solvent. He also taught us about concentration, molarity, and what causes the pH of a substance to go up or down (the amount of H+ ions.).
B. Useful Materials
This is a picture of how electronegative the elements are compared to the other ones.
This video describes surface tension and how water will stick to cardboard when it's upside down. I was amazed by how water can almost magically defy gravity, but that there is a scientific explanation for it. This pertains to class because we talked about how surface tension is a special characteristic of water.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15041664
This PubMed article talks about how divalent cations and ions. This article goes into depth about how these cations change erythrocyte membranes. We didn't talk about this in class, but eventually we will.