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I managed to pass both intro chemistry and intro physics in college without learning anything at all about either subject just by being able to manipulate dimensions to arrive at an answer for exam questions. In one semester of Chem I even made a B and had no clue about the actual subject matter.
I guffawed (inwardly - I do not guffaw out loud) when I read Gary's comment.
This is exactly the way I felt when I first laid eyes on unit multipliers and figured out what they were. (For the uninitiated, the single best place on the web to look at unit multipliers is Donna Young's homeschool website. Click on "Math" at the left. Then click on "Unit Multipliers" at the bottom right.)
Ed's cousin, a chemistry teacher at a high performing high school in IL (has a Ph.D. in chemstry) told us that a lot of his students come into his class not having the first clue about fractions or ratios. The best students do, he said, but no one else.
So the question is: is he going to teach remedial math, or is he going to teach chemistry?
He teaches them chemistry and unit multipliers.
3 comments:
Even I, the resident math phobe, figured out how to do unit multipliers. Once understood (at least on my lowly level) I actually entertained notions that they were, gulp, fun.
While math kid just "figures stuff out" ala Doug, Steve, Barry, etc., I actually did check to see if he knew what they were. He said he had never seen them so I taught him the easy ones from Saxon Algebra 1. It took him a couple of times, but he got it.
I have no idea how he figures it out without them, but he does on this level. Some kind of brute math force or something.
Unit multipliers are THE BEST.
Especially for those of us lacking brute math force.
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