Respond+with+Wonderment+and+Awe

Respond with Wonderment and Awe

Our third unit of chemistry gave the students an opportunity to design their own experiment; at first it may seem like a dry "daily routine" topic where we just come up with a simple experiment and get over it quickly. But this was not the case. You see, my mentor Albert Einstein told me, right before he passed, "//The most beautiful experience in the world is the experience of the mysterious".// Today was the day that I finally understood what he meant. Our group members, Isabelle and Kevin, and I, were deciding on which experiment we should work on. First we have to think of a workable, secondly we have to experiment with it, and lastly we record the results. What I realized why i felt that the previous DIY experiments in school were not as exciting, it is because the planning of the experiment was too vague, and thus we finished the experiment fairly quickly with little or no point that is referential to the hypothesis. But this time, Mrs. Knowles made sure that all of us had detailed designs to work with, and with a well planned experiment, even the seemingly most tedious topic of "cleaning rust with soda" has become a challenge for our group. To be honest, I rejected the idea that coke are able to clean anything; I usually presumed its the liquid that washes off the rust over time. As we experimented with over 7 brands of soda, our final results came out to be quite the thrill. As we all thought, in fact, most of us in this world thought that Coca Cola would clean off the most rust because it supposedly should contain more acidic content in its drink. Regardless, the soda that cleaned off the most rust was 7 UP. I was very surprised, we were all deceived by the dangerously colored coke when the soda that was closest to pure in color turns out to be the deadliest (forgive me for my exaggeration). Unfortunately, our knowledge of chemistry wouldnt allow us to pinpoint the exact reason WHY it did the job, but this was a break through in general chemistry! Learning doesn't have to be boring at all; with these little surprises and breakthrough, studying can be more interesting.