UC San Diego is Ranked 2nd in the Nation in Washington Monthly New College Rankings

http://ucsdnews.ucsd.edu/newsrel/general/09-09CollegeRankings.asp

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2009_09/019738.php

The comments that various visitors left on the second link are quite “interesting” to say the least. I think anyone that subscribes to John Henry Newman’s The Idea of a University http://www.newmanreader.org/works/idea/ would agree that popular rankings such as U.S. News are offensive and don’t take into account the effectiveness of the institution in terms of intellectual and cultural enrichment. I do not mean to say that Washington Post’s rankings are superior in every way, however I do appreciate their alternative approach. As a former U.S. Marine and a student of a field that attempts to merge right and left brain thinkers, I wholeheartedly agree with one of the reader’s comments below:

So not allowing the ROTC on campus makes you a bad public citizen? Maybe those campuses don’t believe in encouraging military recruitment (especially during a period of wasteful, unjust war)? IIR, public universities allow ROTC because they have no choice, whereas privates like Harvard can afford to deny them.

Also, I don’t like the idea that a university’s public worth is measured by how many Ph.Ds and scientists it creates — first, it discounts the amount of good that liberal arts majors do, even if they only earn a B.A. or an M.A., and encourages an even greater shift of scarce resources from the humanities to the sciences. Why must Washington Monthly participate in the devaluing of right-brain thinkers? We already suffer enough on the income scale.

As I push through my pre-med courses I often stray off course and contemplate the other possible career choices that my academic path might serve. One of these is veterinary medicine.  I found this comprehensive veterinary medicine career guide, enjoy!

Chemical Nomenclature

Chemical nomenclature is an important aspect of chemistry.   Therefore, it is essential to be able to go between name and formula easily.  Historically, chemistry has been plagued with common names.  Chemicals were named whatever someone wanted to call them.  With rare exception, we don’t use common names anymore.  However, there are two chemicals that you must know that use common names. They are water (H2O) and ammonia (NH3).  Most people at least know the formula for water, if you don’t, you do now!
The names of the elements are common names.  There is no system to their names so you just have to learn them.  There is also a small group of compounds that exist as diatomic molecules.  That is they exist with two of the same element in the compound.  For these compounds, the name of the compound is the same as the name of the element because the compound only contains that element.  They are shown below:

Name                Formula

Hydrogen             H2
Nitrogen             N2
Oxygen             O2
Fluorine             F2
Chlorine             Cl2
Bromine             Br2
Iodine                 I2
Astatine             At2

One good way to remember them is they are all of the —gens. (Hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen and the halogens (F2, Cl2, Br2, I2, At2).
Nowadays, however, there is a system for chemical nomenclature. It is called the IUPAC (International Union for Pure and Applied Chemistry) systematic nomenclature.  It is important to learn this system so you become fluent in the language of chemistry.  This handout is designed to help you.

Chemistry class is really taking it’s toll. I never realized how much math was necessary, it seems that the class has involved nothing but analysis in conversion from various systems of measurement. I plan to write about quantitative composition later this week. Until then check out this amazing historical library of anatomy illustrations. It’s so interesting to see previous generation’s interpretations of physiology.

http://www.nlm.nih.gov/exhibition/historicalanatomies/browse.html

Had my first chemistry exam today. This was entirely too easy of test to do as poorly as I did. I definitely did not study sufficiently this week as I’ve been distracted by physical therapy and getting the biomechanics on my race bike dialed in. Here is a sample question from today’s exam:

A 450.0g piece of iron (sFe = 0.473J/gºC) was heated to 275ºC and put into 650g of water.  If the final temperature of the mixture was 45.0ºC, what was the initial temperature of the water?

For this problem you need to have committed a comonly used formula to memory.

mFe*sFe*(Tf- TiFe) + mw*sw*(Tf – Tiw) = 0

Basically matter or “m” of iron (symbol Fe) times specific heat or “s” of iron times (final temperature minus (-) intiail temperature) or what is called change in temperature (delta t)

Plus (+)

matter of water etc. etc. So Fe being iron w being water.

We then work the problem out algebraically inputing the known values from the question into the forumla

450.0g(0.473J/gºC)(45.0ºC -275ºC) + 650g(4.184J/gºC)(45.0ºC – Tiw) = 0

212.9J/ºC(-230ºC) + 2720J/ºC(45.0ºC – Tiw) = 0

-48970J + 12200J – (2720J/ºC) Tiw = 0

73400 J  =  (2720 J/ºC) Tiw

Tiw = 27ºC