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richwicks says

Why does Carbon react with Oxygen and not NItrogen?

It does react but has high kinetic barrier because of high energy of N N triple bond which can be looked up. It is less memorization that you have been led to believe, although there is some. BTW enginerds are by far the best when I teach chemistry.

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Patrick says

I enjoyed chemistry up until biochem. I like to learn principles and apply them, but biochem didn't seem to have much of that.

Speaking of chem, my freshman year chemistry prof was missing a couple of fingers on one hand from a lab accident, in which he was holding something that blew up. Someone told me that's fairly common among chemistry profs, almost a mark of distinction.

Yeah, biochem is the start of extensive memorization while gen chem, inorg chem and org chem has principles that are applied and phys chem has mostly formulas.
Most chemists older than 50 incl me became interested in chemistry because they were blowing stuff up as kids or teenagers. I used to put small explosives on city train tracks when I was a kid back in USSR...danger was that if train driver catches you, he will beat the shit out of you. Interesting that in this sense there was more freedom in ussr than current USA where kid who planted harmless yet annoying explosive would be sent to Guantanamo.

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gabbar says

Engineering porn, how?

I call it hype tech. It's when the Xer morons were telling the bottom feeding MSM news consumers, that there were Nano Bots going to perform pinpoint targeted surgery, Nano Particles to create a Space Elevator, Articulate AI robotic humanoids were going to replace burger flippers, and what we now know are nothing more than a bit of latex molded to the female form. Was supposed to be a robotic gyrating AI sexbot, able to give you a hummer, and wash the dishes.

Of course the reality of what is actually doable never matches the hype.

And the biggest whopper of all, there will be maned Mars missions, to and from Mars, and eventually we would establish a Mars colony. Leaving Physics and human anatomy out of the equation.

@richwicks
“ Chemistry was just enormous amounts of memorization. Why does Carbon react with Oxygen and not NItrogen?”

Once you get to Physical Chemistry, you get heavily into the calculus of probability, all about determining reactivity and predicted reactions. So it definitely goes far beyond memorization.

Patrick says

Organic chem was hard, but biochem was even worse

That's interesting most people find the difficulties of those classes reversed from your standpoint. I liked organic but part-2 was one of my only Bs.. Prof only gave one one A per class.

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Eric Holder says

War porn.

dammit, I was beaten to the punch.

As a strange perversion, I liked organic chem at Berkeley. In my last class, I was second from the top in the final exam in a huge class. I got rather adept at doing synthetic pathways. Probably should have made a fortune manufacturing meth instead of the grind.

Ceffer says

As a strange perversion, I liked organic chem at Berkeley. In my last class, I was second from the top in the final exam in a huge class. I got rather adept at doing synthetic pathways. Probably should have made a fortune manufacturing meth instead of the grind.

Is your career related to organic chemistry now?

Ceffer says

Probably should have made a fortune manufacturing meth instead of the grind.

Heisenberg? Is that you?

Shaman says

@richwicks
“ Chemistry was just enormous amounts of memorization. Why does Carbon react with Oxygen and not NItrogen?”

Once you get to Physical Chemistry, you get heavily into the calculus of probability, all about determining reactivity and predicted reactions. So it definitely goes far beyond memorization.

Then it's taught wrong.

Start with the physics, and move back to observation. That was a complaint I had about physics, they first taught us the equations THEN they taught us how to derive them. I was so pissed off when I realized I didn't have to memorize any of it.

I hate memorization. I have to understand how it works, it's not enough to know it works.

Details G = Delta H - T delta S

gabbar says

Is your career related to organic chemistry now?

Please, do not confuse me with the masses. I am a rentier now.

Spontaneity is a function of initial energy differnce plus porpoensity to seek a more random (disordered) state of being....

That's why my room is a mess, but has yet to spontaneously combust

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Bd6r says

Most chemists older than 50 incl me became interested in chemistry because they were blowing stuff up as kids or teenagers.

Lol, I did that too. In high school chem I realized that I could dissolve and mix the lead nitrate and potassium iodide that I had in my chemistry kit at home to create potassium nitrate, a component of gunpowder. And it worked, I made gunpowder by mixing in charcoal and sulfer. Then I had horribly orange lead iodide as a byproduct which I threw out hoping my parents wouldn't find it. Probably poisoned some landfill, though it wasn't a large quantity.

I loved chemistry in high school and did very well. Had a great chem teacher who later went insane and murdered the superintendent:

https://www.nytimes.com/1993/12/17/us/police-arrest-a-teacher-in-school-shootings.html

Still, he was a really great teacher.

Patrick says

In high school chem I realized that I could dissolve and mix the lead nitrate and potassium iodide that I had in my chemistry kit at home to create potassium nitrate, a component of gunpowder. And it worked, I made gunpowder by mixing in charcoal and sulfer. Then I had horribly orange lead iodide as a byproduct which I threw out hoping my parents wouldn't find it. Probably poisoned some landfill, though it wasn't a large quantity.

We could buy potassium nitrate as fertilizer so no need to make it. After black powder we graduated to making acetone peroxide (of shoe bomber fame). That was dangerous, a friend of mine has a scar on side of face...my best success tho was mixing Aluminum powder with potassium permanganate. That goes off with a huge bright flash.
All of that is strictly verboten these days. No wonder kids are afraid of and bored by chemistry.

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Ultra_FJB says

Prof only gave one one A per class.

I found the sciences that I did take, and retained almost nothing, to always be that way. It was weird. Our top students in high school would be thrilled with a B in Chem. Chem and biology teachers are strange animals from my small/short experience with taking them. Sciences were not my jam.

My Chem teacher would do a martial arts "act" or whatever you'd call it at the end of classes on Fridays. He'd also blow shit up. He frankly did some pretty reckless stuff in a school setting. It was a fun/bad class. I took the C and in hindsight, who gave a shit. I used or needed nothing from those classes. Was useless knowledge for me, so I emptied that from the brain bank.