Oops!

Note to self: Should you ever wish to point out the depreciation in examination standards in recent years, the poor show made by modern students with their modern, flashy GCSEs (not a patch on the traditional, solid, O-levels of years gone by), then please note the following:

You really, really don't help your argument by, oh yes, making multiple mistakes in your answer sheet.

Should you be interested:

A titration can be used to find the concentration of a solution. In a titration, 22.0 cm³ of hydrochloric acid is required to neutralise 25.0 cm³ of calcium hydroxide solution. The concentration of the hydrochloric acid is 0.001 mol/dm³.
The equation for the reaction is: Ca(OH)₂ + 2HCl → CaCl₂ + 2H₂O
(Relative atomic masses: H = 1; O = 16; Ca = 40)

How many moles of hydrochloric acid are present in 22.0 cm³ of the acid solution? (Answer to 2 sig. fig.)
Given and correct answer: 2.2E-5 mol/dm³
With how many moles of calcium hydroxide will 22.0 cm³ of this acid solution react? (Answer to 2 sig. fig.)
Given and correct answer: 1.1E-5 mols
What is the concentration of the calcium hydroxide solution? (Answer in mol/dm³ to 2 sig. fig.)
Given and correct answer: 4.4E-4 mol/dm³
What is the concentration of the calcium hydroxide solution? (Answer in g/dm³ to 2 sig. fig.)
Given answer: 0.33 g/dm³
Correct answer: 0.033 g/dm³


Nitrogen can be obtained by heating solid ammonium dichromate(VI), (NH₄)2Cr₂O₇. Chromium (III) oxide (Cr₂O₃) and steam are the only other products of this reaction.
(i) Construct the equation, including state symbols, for the action of heat on ammonium dichromate(VI).
Given answer: 2(NH₄)₂Cr₂O₇(s) --> 2Cr₂O₃(s) + H₂O(g) + N₂(g)
Correct answer: (NH₄)₂Cr₂O₇(s) --> Cr₂O₃(s) + 4H₂O(g) + N₂(g)
Their version doesn't even balance! We lose 2 N atoms, 14 H atoms, and 7 O atoms!!


One of the hydrocarbons in petrol is octane. This equation shows the combustion of octane: 2C₈H₁₈ + 25O₂ → 16CO₂ + 18H₂O
What mass of carbon dioxide is produced for every tonne of octane burned in this reaction? (Relative atomic masses: H = 1; C = 12; O = 16) (Answer in tonnes to 2 sig. fig.)
Given answer: 3.1 tonnes
Correct answer: 3.4 tonnes

Basically, unimpressive. I got bored after Question B4, so there might be errors in the answers after that point too. I'll update this if I get that far.

On Straightness and Slugs...

There are many things in life that I find frustrating. I dislike mess, and things that aren't straight (pictures, table mats, etc etc). There is a natural order to things that, it seems to me, revolves, as it were, around the right angle. Similarly, things should be symmetrical, and centralised. This is why I choose to type using the justified paragraph alignment option selected, even though it does occasionally produce lines where the words are spaced a long way apart. It seems only natural to me that, for example when placing a settee against a wall, the gap on the left should be exactly the same size as the gap on the right. Otherwise, it's not, well, right. To quote Edward Monkton, "Those who do not believe in the Law of Straightness WILL NOT BE SAVED!" OK, I accept that it's unlikely to ever form the basis of my theological understanding, but the sentiment is one I approve of.

I think I would have made a good Roman. Never mind going around the hill, not when you have 100,000 men with stong muscles and nothing to do - go straight through it! Bring it on! Straight is good. If the quickest point is between two straight lines, then it follows that not only is building roads the Roman way good from the "time is money" point of view, but it also makes sense ecologically. The more direct the route, the shorter the resulting road, and consequently the less of our green and pleasant land becomes covered with tarmac, buses and Little Chefs. Which can only be a good thing.

Being ecologically considerate and caring about the environment is important to me. Don't get me wrong, I understand that sometimes things have to happen, and you can't necessarily rationally prevent ALL disruption to the countryside, but in general, I like it green and leafy. I buy free-range and am starting to think about organic (although to be honest, if the cow has a cold I might rather it was treated with antibiotics rather than honey and lemon and a Vicks VapourRub). But again, as a principle, environmentally friendly is good.

Which brings me to the most amazing invention I've read about today.* I'm not much of a gardener at the moment (it comes of living in a flat) but I like plants. And, also liking things straight and organised, I suspect that what I'm really going to want when I'm the proud owner of my very own piece of England, is something to ensure that nothing is going to decrease the symmetry of my planting scheme. Creepy-crawlies are, I understand, not respectors of modern design, which is why I shall be investing in a SlugBot. This wonderful machine uses a combination of GPS, InfraRed and UltraSound to locate slugs, a long arm to grab them, and a bio-fuel cell to convert slug into useful electricity, which in turn powers its on-board battery. It's green, sustainable, and will help me not to lose my precious plants to the slimy rascals. What can be better?

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* OK, it's not got a huge amount of competition, but it sounds more impressive than saying "the only invention I've read about today."

Gosh, it's amazing how you two connect...

Wires.

I read recently that the combined length of the wires used in the manufacture of the new Airbus (the double-decker monster that makes a 757 look like a child's plaything) reached a grand total of something in the order of 500 thousand miles. Now, even accounting for the mass of circuitry that must be needed to let the captain know if the wing's about to fall off, and that needed to power the TV screens, that's a heck of a lot of wiring.

Which led me to thinking about connections. Train connections, even (please noooo...) bus connections, connections between people, connections between wires. In the same way that just one failure in the connections in the mass of wiring in the Airbus could have catastrophic consequences (Business Class could miss out on freshly ground coffee again), connections play a vital role in our day-to-day lives. Which, I suppose, is why we moan and gripe so much when they fail. That day the bus gets held up in a traffic jam, meaning we miss our next bus and arrive at work late for the meeting. When the trains all curl up and die because somewhere near Putney a small leaf has had the temerity to fall within 100 miles of the track, causing us to miss our best friend's wedding.

So imagine, dear reader, my frustration having spent the last six hours trying to persuade four differently colour-coded wires to connect to their opposite numbers, in a game called "Set Up The Equipment To Do A Day-Long Experiment." You'd have thought it would be simple, but through admitting this, you reveal yourself to be anything but an experimental scientist. For our equipment is notoriously unreliable.

Let's hope the Airbus is somewhat less temperamental.

It's simply H2O...

"Water, water everywhere, but not a drop to drink..."

So cries the Ancient Mariner (possibly... I never was any good at English: science is more my thing). And it's a cry that's being echoed across the wild, and currently parched, plains of Oxford after a building contractor accidently drove a crane through the mains water pipe into my building. Or something. Given this is Britain, and it's currently summertime, it could be that we have the wrong sort of water. Whatever.

For the point is, dear readers, that we have no water. None to drink, none to use in the bathrooms, and none for our experiments. Which is how I come to be writing this, as I wait for my water circulator (a device that, well, circulates water) to slowly warm up from 2 to 25 degrees centigrade. I would normally simply empty out a few litres of cold water and replace them with a similar volume of hot. Unable to do this, I could be here a while.

Which got me thinking just how much water we must use. Apparently the daily volume consumed by every single person in the UK is, on average, 160 litres: that's really rather a lot.

So I propose a solution to this problem, and the current climate-change-influenced shortages we're either currently experiencing, or which in the near future are guaranteed to turn England's green and pleasant land into something resembling the Sahara desert (although possibly without the camals). To paraphrase from that attributed to Marie Antoinette*, "Let them drink wine."

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* As mentioned, I'm not an English student and, unsurprisingly, one would be correct in assuming that, despite a decent grade at GCSE, I'm not much of a historian either. Consequently, I had to Google to discover who made this infamous comment. Imagine my surprise, therefore, to find out (from the font of all knowledge that is Yahoo!) that in all likelihood, Ms. Antoinette was in fact completely innocent of this heinous crime, a far more likely culprit being French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau, writing in early 1766! The things you learn when you start wasting time...