1st Experiment Day of Gen Chem 2 Lab

At least one of you know that I'm taking courses at SLCC to get prerequisites done for dental school. One of them is Gen Chem 2 Lab. I must say that today was rather interesting. I must note that the chemistry lab facility there is horrible. No surprise there. 

I've learned that my partner is a very panicky person. He kept forewarning that we wouldn't get done in time. He also is too worried about others around him. He got frustrated that people started leaving before we were done. I'll name my partner as "Tweek" after the south park character Tweek Tweak.

We were measuring out different chemicals that were already filled in "community" volumetric burets. Apparently, they don't have enough burets for everyone or maybe they're afraid someone will swallow chemicals. Anyways, I was reporting the buret measurements to the hundredths place such as 2.02 ml iodine. Tweek said that we were supposed to do it to the tenths place and I asked him why. He replies with 'because the teacher said so' to which I began explaining why the uncertainty lies at the hundredths. He stubbornly agreed but I later took a peek at his paper and kept them to the tenths. Later the teacher looked at my data table and said I should be reporting that to the tenths. Once again, I explained where the uncertainty lies is the location of the last digit of reported measurement. She gave me a baffled look so I then pretended to be mistaken and changed my data to the tenths. LOL.

Another interesting moment: we were mixing acetone and H+ from HCl in water in a test tube of iodine, and we calculated the time for the reaction to complete by waiting for the colors to go clear. On our first trial Tweek was using a stirring rod but he only stirred horizontally. This of course resulted the top layers to clear up first. On the following trials I told him that he should mix up and down as well. He stubbornly did it but had to be reminded over and over. The mixtures from there on were going clear throughout the test tube. So he learned that the first trial had to be thrown out, right? Wrong! Tweek wanted to use the data of the poor trial for our reaction rate calculations. Apparently, he chose that trial because the time to react was similar to the other students around him. I placed my foot down and said no. 

I mentioned that Tweek was frustrated others were leaving befuse us. He failed to realize that we only had to finish the lab and not the calculations. However, I was not responding to him because I wanted to get all my calculations done before leaving campus. Later I told him that others were leaving earlier because they postponed their calculations.

This semester is going to be fun. I wasn't mad at anyone today but rather, I was entertained. But I did get mad at stupid Utahn drivers going 50 mph on the freeway for reasons none other than being stupid.