Teaching the art of guessing

http://blogs.nature.com/thescepticalchymist/2013/08/teaching-the-art-of-guessing.html

Estimation of chemical quantities is, in my opinion, one of the most important skills a chemist can have. It is also one that my students are simultaneously skeptical of — why not just use a search engine to find the ‘real’ value or crunch numbers to 8 decimal places in your calculator — and intimidated by (I probably don’t help by telling this story about Fermi).

I emphasize the need to gather a tool kit of anchor points (key chemical values) and maps (relationships between quantities) and provide examples. Here is the handout (pdf)

The computer — your Virgil in the world of atoms

http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/chemistry/laureates/2013/press.html

Chemists used to create models of molecules using plastic balls and sticks. Today, the modelling is carried out in computers. In the 1970s, Martin Karplus, Michael Levitt and Arieh Warshel laid the foundation for the powerful programs that are used to understand and predict chemical processes. Computer models mirroring real life have become crucial for most advances made in chemistry today.

Thermodynamics

Galerie de flocons de neige, par Jerome Mathey et Valérian Mazataud. 2007 . voir Galerie de photos de flocons ou neige

Heard that it's going to be 0 degC tonight, had the notion of being isothermal at 0 degC then I googled it up and found out that adiabatic is more accurate ...

An isothermal process is a change in which the temperature of the system stays constant: ΔT = 0. This typically occurs when a system is in contact with an outside thermal reservoir (heat bath), and the change occurs slowly enough to allow the system to continually adjust to the temperature of the reservoir through heat exchange. An alternative special case in which a system exchanges no heat with its surroundings (Q = 0) is called an adiabatic process. In other words, in an isothermal process, the value ΔT = 0 but Q ≠ 0, while in an adiabatic process, ΔT ≠ 0 but Q = 0.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isothermal