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Did you learn chemistry in school?


Allen

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Micro informs macro.

I have to know a bit about metal properties at the chemical level to understand why they behave as they do when machining.

The viscosity of carbon, tungsten and iron all factor into how fast you can turn a cutting tool to shave off bits of metal.

 

Though we should get Tiago on here. Bro's nearly finished his PhD thesis on the florescence of heavy elements.

Edited by Blue
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Made an "A" in Chemistry in high school and a "B" in college. But they weren't relevant to my major in any conceivable fashion, so I can't tell you all of the elements in the periodic table. Nor can I remember most of the stuff we covered in class.

"Cram courses" are those that I'm most likely to forget. I learn more from actually doing things. If I don't use particular skills after I've learned them, then I forget how to use said skills. The same goes for most remedial information.

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3 minutes ago, Blue said:

Micro informs macro.

I have to know a bit about metal properties at the chemical level to understand why they behave as they do when machining.

The viscosity of carbon, tungsten and iron all factor into how fast you can turn a cutting tool to shave off bits of metal.

 

Though we should get Tiago on here. Bro's nearly finished his PhD thesis on the florescence of heavy elements.

Thanks for the shout out :)

Yeah, I have just finished my PhD thesis on Chemistry, I have studied the luminescence of lanthanides complexes on ionic liquids. Here are a couple of pictures:

58f801ee2ea16_20140722_165436_R.doLago.thumb.jpg.74ba7322be59e0c1975b160d7a538532.jpg

58f801f841933_20140722_165556_R.doLago.thumb.jpg.8d74362bd89eb11979a8ae9f67f2f3a9.jpg

More pictures can be found here: https://goo.gl/photos/gGMj7m55t2yMFDNy6

Anyways, I have been studying Chemistry since my high school years, when I got a technologist degree. Then I studied at college, where I got a major in Chemistry, with a minor in Biotechnology, though I have never worked on the latter. Then I started my Masters, where I started studying the luminescence of lanthanides, and I continued it on my doctorate.

The lanthanide elements are used on light emitting materials, for example there are some on the screen where you are reading this. The red color of emission comes from the Europium(III) ion, while the green color comes from the Therbium(III) ion, and the blue color may come from either the Thulium(III) ion or the Europium(II) ion. Together you have the primary colors red, green, and blue, the famous RGB, which by mixing you can form any other color.

It's really fascinating 🤓

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I took chem back in high school, but honestly, I wasn't very good at it. I also really hated the labs; none of the questions we were asked could be found in our reading material and trying to find human readable content about the specifics of some of the chemicals we worked with was hard. Doing physics labs later was a completely different experience. It made me feel happy and empowered that I could apply math myself to find what I was looking for rather than relying on some sketchy website with ~1998 web design.

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Oh, I certainly know the basics. According to the local school system, I have a decent understanding of chemistry up to the pre-university level. This was 7 years ago so I'm sure I'd be rusty compared to before. You don't get any chemistry in electrical engineering. (But seriously, it really helps when making sense of the many articles written about Fuel Cells.)

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Yes, and I did well enough to have taken what I needed for the MCAT. Organic Chem 1 was a odd class because more than a handful were in pre-med and OChem is typically a weeder class. Spoiler alert, it is. I've never seen so many drops in one course. 

OChem 2 was not a walk in the park either, even on subjects that I grasped well in lecture like sigmatropic rearrangements. I didn't feel as if I reached that mythical knowledge wall where I could no longer conceptualize ... but my hat goes off to those that live and breathe the more advanced topics. 

 

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I learned (Past tense) some basic highschool chemistry, but as my profession (programmer) requires virtually none of it, I didn't do much past that. I'm more of a maths / logics kind of guy

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I dont remember when we learned a little about it... But there was a chemistry class in highschool I took junior year.

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I took chemistry in 10th grade but it just felt like a second math class to me... and I don't really like math :P. The periodic table and the elements themselves are cool, but I didn't like molarity, stoichiometry, molecular structure or even chemical nomenclature... by the time I was able to get the hang of each topic, we moved onto the next one :/

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  • 2 weeks later...

Organic Chemistry in one of the few subject in school where I actually don't suck, I just love it! I often try to synethses stuff by myself, or recreate things I had to do in the lab, I spend like most of my money on chemicals.

And by the way, if you think chemists don't have humor, this molecule here is called Penguinone:

226px-Penguinone.svg.png.383697f08f1a25d7f152794e54f70c86.png

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  • 1 year later...

I took Chemistry in Grades 9 and 10. I got good grades, but lost interest in the subject as it got a bit too boring for me.

Edited by Cash In
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  • 2 months later...

Oh yes! And I'll have to learn it although I'm not sure whether I'll use it later on it not, But still it's quite fun!

Learning science is fun(though not everytime is fun), it answers so many previously unanswered questions!

Like what they always say, "It's fun when you understand it!"

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I never really learned chemistry, I was in a class for it back in high school but I had to drop it due to some really bad bullying(to this day I still wonder why my bullies weren't kicked out of the course instead of making me drop it???????????).  My 5th grade class never really covered it either, unfortunately...

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I'm currently studying plant sciences in university so I get a lot of chemistry, especially bio-organic chemistry.

I really like chemistry related subjects, my favorite is definitely genetics & molecular biology!:mlp_yeehaa:

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I had chemistry in my school and now, I study geology. And a important part of geology is also chemistry (or more correct anorganic chemistry). It is on the one side a really interesting subject but also one of my hardest subjects. I also have crystal chemistry as one of my subjects. 

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