Tie One On

This past week had a few interesting events. First of all, I was able to throw out a few puns that caused a few chuckles and a lot of groans among my upperclassmen. We worked on phase transitions and latent heat energy in chemistry. When the students started having trouble with a problem about latent heat, I explained how the girls would do better on those problems than the boys because the units were in joules and the girls like joules better than boys do.
My TA has been installing some aluminum clad bubble wrap insulation in the greenhouse. I want to reduce the energy cost. I plan to run it at 40 degrees fahrenheit through the winter and produce some grafted conifers. This coming week I’ll show all of my freshmen how to graft and then offer training after school to interested students. They are the ones who will take over the plant production.

Today I did some demos for my chemistry students and successfully completed two out of the three. I warmed and then cooled chainsaw bar oil to discuss viscosity. That worked just fine. Then I did 10W-30W oil to show that it reverses the process and thickens upon heating and gets thinner upon cooling. It didn’t work. It behaved just like the chainsaw oil. I pointed out that things don’t always work out and that I got ripped off with that brand of oil.

Yesterday my chemistry students did a latent heat lab. They all had their prelabs done and I have been letting them just reference the procedure in the lab instruction packet when they do their writeups. Unfortunately there was a lot of bumbling around during the lab. It seems that they are doing the prelab without reading the procedure. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised that they would take the easy way out. So I had to warn them, they are very close to having to include procedural summaries in their lab reports.

Yesterday was interesting. I wore black jeans and a black shirt with a bright pink/paisley tie. I had at least twenty different compliments from students throughout the day. I even had one of my ninth grade girls interrupt the class discussion to say that my tie was having some sort of an effect on her. After school one of the junior girls in chemistry came in for extra help with a classmate. Before she left, she told me that she couldn’t take her eyes off of my tie while I was lecturing and that everytime I looked at her, she quickly looked away.

Kids think they are so worldly and yet can say the most innocent things that could be taken inappropriately. It is one of the joys of teaching.