I screwed up my Chemistry SPA today.
Firstly, I accidentally overturned the whole bottle of Chemical A onto the bench, and that time Ms Yeo was just beside me, but I think she turned away just before I upsetted the chemical, because when I asked her for some more Chemical A, she was quite surprised and asked me, "So fast used finished ah?" That one bottle could actually last through at least 4 titrations, but I asked when I was doing my second one.
Secondly, because the mouth of the bottle containing Chemical B is very big, so when I pour it into the burette (via a funnel), some of them leaked outside the funnel, down the outside of the burette and onto the table. And as the chemical is of a very dark and distinct colour, it made a mess on my table, unlike Chemical A because it was colourless, even though almost the whole bottle of Chemical A was spilled out. Plus when Chemical B evaporates when left to stand, it turns to brown and stained the place. So I have a blue cloth with many ugly brown spots and table with many brown dots.
Thirdly, I forgot to put the measuring cylinder onto the table when pouring Chemical A into it. I held it in mid-air for my own convienence, and I think Ms Yeo saw that and deducted my marks because we are supposed to put it on the table to prevent parallax error.
Lastly, I wasted too much time cleaning up my apparatus, such that I didn't really check my answers. And when we still have 5 to 10 minutes left, I realised that an equation is supposed to be:
x/y * k = answer
and I put it as:
y/x * k = answer
So my answer was wrong at the second step. And so thing is I have to cancel almost ALL my workings and redo them, leaving a big mess out of my paper when I thought it was quite neat at first. And I am not really sure if my workings are correct because I didn't have time to check. But as far as I know, my titration values are similar to some friends' and the ultimate answer is correct (they asked which one out of 2 is a better choice).
And this is an actual SPA counted for 'O' levels. Really! That's why I am not naming the chemicals because there are other classes which have yet to take the test. And SPA is 20% of 'O' levels and there are 5 SPAs, so each one is around 4%. So I guess I lose around 25% of the marks for this SPA so I think it will be around 1 mark? Haha, that's something comforting to hear though. Dun worry Sherman, work harder next time. Anyway I am quite confident of scoring A1 for Chemistry, it's only Biology I am worried about.
Oh Biology SPA is going to be about Enzymes, and I am having it on Wednesday. And Physics SPA is on Thursday just before school ends, so I dunno if I may make it on time for choir practice. Oh because Mrs Setho (Physics teacher) did not tell us our SPA topic, we were all complaining about it, and she announced in class today that one of the teachers called MOE and asked if they were allowed to reveal the topics to the students. MOE replied that they can give a general topic of the paper. So Mrs Setho told us that it is something to do with Waves that was taught last year. And only topic that was taught last year regarding waves was Light Waves, and the only experiment about Light Waves was... determining focal length of a converging lens! *hint hint*
Anyway, I just read about this quote yesterday:
If you dun get it, the first bird will get the worm but the first mouse will not get the cheese because it will get trapped by the mousetrap. It may sound dumb at first but come to think of it, it actually applies a lot to life. Think of it as: The first person may get all the benefits, but it is always not the best as it involves risks. It is always best to think first before acting or doing something.
Now speaking about life, Mrs Setho was teaching us about live, neutral and earth wires today, and she mentioned that the neutral wire carry near zero voltage, while the live wire carries a large amount of voltage. So she said something along this line:
Firstly, I accidentally overturned the whole bottle of Chemical A onto the bench, and that time Ms Yeo was just beside me, but I think she turned away just before I upsetted the chemical, because when I asked her for some more Chemical A, she was quite surprised and asked me, "So fast used finished ah?" That one bottle could actually last through at least 4 titrations, but I asked when I was doing my second one.
Secondly, because the mouth of the bottle containing Chemical B is very big, so when I pour it into the burette (via a funnel), some of them leaked outside the funnel, down the outside of the burette and onto the table. And as the chemical is of a very dark and distinct colour, it made a mess on my table, unlike Chemical A because it was colourless, even though almost the whole bottle of Chemical A was spilled out. Plus when Chemical B evaporates when left to stand, it turns to brown and stained the place. So I have a blue cloth with many ugly brown spots and table with many brown dots.
Thirdly, I forgot to put the measuring cylinder onto the table when pouring Chemical A into it. I held it in mid-air for my own convienence, and I think Ms Yeo saw that and deducted my marks because we are supposed to put it on the table to prevent parallax error.
Lastly, I wasted too much time cleaning up my apparatus, such that I didn't really check my answers. And when we still have 5 to 10 minutes left, I realised that an equation is supposed to be:
x/y * k = answer
and I put it as:
y/x * k = answer
So my answer was wrong at the second step. And so thing is I have to cancel almost ALL my workings and redo them, leaving a big mess out of my paper when I thought it was quite neat at first. And I am not really sure if my workings are correct because I didn't have time to check. But as far as I know, my titration values are similar to some friends' and the ultimate answer is correct (they asked which one out of 2 is a better choice).
And this is an actual SPA counted for 'O' levels. Really! That's why I am not naming the chemicals because there are other classes which have yet to take the test. And SPA is 20% of 'O' levels and there are 5 SPAs, so each one is around 4%. So I guess I lose around 25% of the marks for this SPA so I think it will be around 1 mark? Haha, that's something comforting to hear though. Dun worry Sherman, work harder next time. Anyway I am quite confident of scoring A1 for Chemistry, it's only Biology I am worried about.
Oh Biology SPA is going to be about Enzymes, and I am having it on Wednesday. And Physics SPA is on Thursday just before school ends, so I dunno if I may make it on time for choir practice. Oh because Mrs Setho (Physics teacher) did not tell us our SPA topic, we were all complaining about it, and she announced in class today that one of the teachers called MOE and asked if they were allowed to reveal the topics to the students. MOE replied that they can give a general topic of the paper. So Mrs Setho told us that it is something to do with Waves that was taught last year. And only topic that was taught last year regarding waves was Light Waves, and the only experiment about Light Waves was... determining focal length of a converging lens! *hint hint*
Anyway, I just read about this quote yesterday:
The early bird may get the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese.
If you dun get it, the first bird will get the worm but the first mouse will not get the cheese because it will get trapped by the mousetrap. It may sound dumb at first but come to think of it, it actually applies a lot to life. Think of it as: The first person may get all the benefits, but it is always not the best as it involves risks. It is always best to think first before acting or doing something.
Now speaking about life, Mrs Setho was teaching us about live, neutral and earth wires today, and she mentioned that the neutral wire carry near zero voltage, while the live wire carries a large amount of voltage. So she said something along this line:
It's called live because it carries a high voltage, so if you touch it, your 'live' (life) will be dead.
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