That’s right, another semester is over! If you’re curious about things I’ve learned in the past, please enjoy some links to other posts. So let’s get going with the latest revelations:
General:
- Eventually, the staff in charge of cleaning bathrooms will notice the graffiti on the back of the bathroom stall door.
- The kind of high school student who takes college classes is motivated to succeed.
- An alarming number of undergraduates don’t even know there’s a difference between viruses and bacteria. Come on people, take the whole run of antibiotics and never take somebody else’s meds.
- Parking on campus gets easier after midterms.
Child Psych:
- Because of a quirk of how children learn language, most children can relate to Ramona Beasley or Amelia Bedelia misunderstanding what they are told.
- We adults might not like to think about it, but children are aware of sexual issues much earlier than puberty. Put CCSD’s issues in context.
- The most messed up thing I have ever read for a class — any class — is the story of David Reimer.
Nutrition:
- I knew that “You can’t out-train a bad diet”. I didn’t know this was mathematically provable. Go ahead and plug some numbers into a calorie calculator and an activity calculator. You can eat a lot more calories than you can possibly burn in a day!
- The Food Pyramid is gone, and good riddance. Fill half your plate with fruits and veggies, and don’t worry too much about grains.
- You don’t have to pay Carl Daikeler to put together a workout and diet plan for you, but it’s better than what many people would put together for themselves.
- A lot of people apparently take Nutrition as an easy class.
Spanish:
- In a college Spanish class, there are likely to be one or two people who speak Spanish ok but want to learn better grammar and spelling.
- A Spanish professor from Spain and a Spanish professor from Central America have some fundamentally different ways of doing things.
- Public speaking is more difficult in a foreign language.
- Spanish doesn’t actually have a “past tense.” Instead, they have a “preterite” that serves the same function.
- Don’t be afraid of the Hispanic grocery store. Odds are very good that the employees you’re likely to encounter are bilingual.
Chemistry:
- Fun and danger in a chemistry lab often go together. It’s important to have a good lab partner and follow directions.
- The chemical reactions that let antacids work often create gas. If you know how to do the math, you can figure out exactly how much acid you’re neutralizing and exactly how much gas you’ve burped.
- Some guy actually built a periodic table.
- Even though the pH scale familiar to swimming pool owners goes from 0 to 14, a pH of less than 0 is possible. This guy won a Nobel Prize for it.
That’s it for today. I’m skipping the closing bits. Have a great weekend!