Great Exam Answers

Well, I survived a semester of teaching Pchem and Earth Science pregnant. Or rather, maybe I should say that my students survived having a pregnant professor teach them.

Here are some exam answers I wrote down during the semester that I read:

1. Why do we say there is a natural asymmetry in the efficiency of converting work to heat and vice-versa?

As Christians, we say its because God made it that way.

2. This problem described a scenario that violated the 1st Law of Thermodynamics. The students had to identify which law it broke and why.

Energy was created magically.

3. Explain the formation of hail.

God makes it!

Things I Learned Teaching Earth Science

This semester I'm teaching Earth Science again.  This being my 2nd-time around, I have learned a few things from last semester:

1.  Earth Science.  Really.  Being a chemist, my Earth Science was very limited.

2.  They really like films.  Maybe they find the giant computers from the films made in the 1980s amusing.  Or maybe they like the break from me lecturing.

3.  Put a laptop in front of a student and chances are, he or she can't resist the urge in checking Facebook.  (All students at my school are given laptops.  Many profs have banned them from their lectures because students are usually chatting online or surfing the Net...which is actually going on because I remember what I was doing when I was a student....let's just say that in grad school my advisor was crazy impressed with my fast typing skills, and I couldn't tell him it was due to my keyboarding class from high school).

4.  Minerals and rocks are boring to students.

5.  The severe weather section (thunderstorms and tornadoes) is a review for Okies.

6.  The Age of the Earth, 7-Days of Creation, and Evolution are touchy subjects.  At least at a Christian school.

7.  Some non-scientists are surprised to learn that scientists don't just make stuff up - they do these cool things called experiments.

8.  I come off as a hippie-environmentalist because I talk about global warming and the ozone layer even though I'm currently struggling to recycle (even though we have the cool new recycle bins at our new place).

9.  Volcanoes are cool.

Earth Science Answers

Last semester, I taught Earth Science for the first time. Here are some of the answers that were written down on assignments and exams that are pretty funny. Overall, most of the time, they were on the right track, but then they couldn't remember specific details so they just decided to throw in other Earth Science knowledge. Let me just say that volcanic activity is always a popular "filler" when answering questions.

1. For a bonus point, they had to provide the Indian name for Mt. St. Helens; for which I got the response:
Big sexy mountain of gorgeous majestic foxyness

2. Magma and Straw-Like Marine Animals
“…molten hot magma is not deadly because as it meets the water it instantly solidifies and cools. This changes the ocean drastically because many deep-sea animals survive off of the hot sauna-like hot tub environment that is provided around these trenches. Some of these are scary marine life and others look like the straws one gets when they order a Cranilla Craze from Sonic.”
*this is actually pretty true, and as a mom with a son that loves Sonic Straws, I love the Sonic straw reference

3. On one exam the following questions appeared (with the actual answer in parenthesis):  

a. Describe how glaciers fit into the hydrologic cycle. (In the water cycle, precipitation at high elevations becomes ice in glaciers where water can be stored up to thousands of years.)

b. What role do they play in the rock cycle? (In the rock cycle, glaciers can scour the land surfaces and transport and deposit sediment.)

These questions were straight from another assignment I had told them to study. It was obvious from the student's answers that he/she remembered certain key words...and fell back on the ever-trusty volcanic activity.
a. Describe how glaciers fit into the hydrologic cycle.  
The subtropics from the glaciers formed through the masses of a gigantic volcanic activity which led to the accounts of the aging mountains.

b. What role do they play in the rock cycle? 
When hot lova mixes with the cooling of the air tight bubbles it explodes leaving a chain reaction through the cooling of the oceans floor.