How would you deal with a situation like this?

Pre-College Topics High School Life
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<p>Okay, so I’m in AP Bio, and we’re going over Chem stuff in preparation for more advanced topics coming up. Over half of the students know little or nothing about Chem. There’s a test on chem stuff TOMORROW (Thursday). I am one of about a 1/3 of our class who has taken chem before.</p>

<p>Our teacher is a biochemist major, that’s what she told us. So she was lecturing about the chem stuff, specifically today, acids and bases.</p>

<p>Well, I nearly pulled my hair out.</p>

<p>First error, she said that Arhennius acids and bases are H+ acceptors/donors, and Bronstead-Lowry acids/bases are protons acceptors/donors. Arhennius acids/bases only work with strong acids and bases because weak acids/bases don’t donate H+'s, only protons (that’s where Bronstead-Lowry comes in). </p>

<p>WTH? </p>

<p>Arhennius acids/bases are characterized by whether they have H+ or OH-. Bronstead-Lowry deals with H+ acceptors/donors, and H+ is SYNONYMOUS with “proton”. And H+ accepting/donating occurs with all acids/bases, even weak ones.</p>

<p>Second error, she said that NH2- is a base; it accepts a proton to become NH3+. She cited this example as an example of why NH2-, the amino functional group, is a base. That one, at least, she wasn’t sure, she then checked her textbook, which supposedly reaffirmed her correctness.</p>

<p>Huh? H adds a +1 to the molecule charge, not +2.</p>

<p>I just checked my textbook; NH2 (not NH2-) is the amino group and NH3+ is the conjugate acid, the ionized form, of that group.</p>

<p>There were some other examples of big errors, but I’ve either forgotten them or I don’t want to continue to bore you.</p>

<p>So, here comes the question. If you were in this situation. Teacher says something you know is wrong. Day before test. Do you either…
a) raise your hand and tell the teacher that he/she is wrong, risking the fact that people will think you’re a know-it-all?
b) keep quiet? (b option worked well for second example b/c I didn’t know she was referring to amino group initially, although she was still wrong)</p>

<p>Everybody who took chem remained quiet. I asked a fellow classmate whether he realized the teacher botched it, and he concurred with me.</p>

<p>Now, before you go and say, obviously… blah blah blah… I need to add a kicker.</p>

<p>Many (not all though I think) test questions will come from a certain site where all students will have access to, and I didn’t find a lot of questions about acid/base. Also, the stuff is probably somewhat nitpicky and it’s probably not going to be on the test (though I wouldn’t bank on anything still).</p>

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<p>XD I knew NH2 looked familiar.</p>

<p>I would have raised my hand, but be careful how you word it. For instance, instead of just flat-out telling her she’s wrong, instead say something like “I always thought…” blahblahblah. Because then it just sounds like you’re asking for characterization.</p>

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<p>There was this one instance where someone asked a question about buffers, and the teacher totally confused everyone with the answer. I don’t know if the guy who asked the question realized something was wrong, and I sorta had a hunch too, though I wasn’t sure enough to say anything. Even though I learned my acid-base stuff well, the teacher’s confusing answer and lecture on buffers has now led me to Wikipedia. That could by why everyone remained quiet after that incident.</p>

<p>I’m pretty sure buffers WILL be on the test tomorrow, given how essential they are to living organisms.</p>

<p>EDIT: I remember now. The question is what would happen if you added acid to the buffer solution. The confusion was that she meant adding the original acid (she was using the carbonic acid-bicarbonate buffer as the example), rather than adding some other strong acid.</p>

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<p>i agree with HGFM (i’m stealing that abbreviation that someone else always uses). make sure you ASK the correct answer, not TELL it, so that way the teacher will still think she is the one who figured out what she did wrong. if it continues like this all year, then only respond to the big errors that might be on a test, because it will be annoying if you have to correct her every 5 seconds, but you will help the rest of the class if it is an error that makes a big difference.</p>

<p>my old math teacher was EXACTLY like your chem teacher. even though i hadn’t taken the course before, i knew everything that was taught because the teacher wasn’t all to intelligent. after a couple months, i didn’t have enough energy to correct him that his formula for a prism was actually for a pyramid, and things like that. but everybody in the class pretty much learned that they’d learn more by NOT listening to him in class.</p>

<p>good luck.</p>

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<p>XD I love that abbreviation. It makes me happy. :)</p>

<p>Yeah, my 11th grade Spanish teacher was such a moron…like she barely spoke English, and when she did she had a super-thick accent so we could barely understand her. So we basically learned Spanish by ourselves.</p>

<p>Seriously, that woman had no place in a classroom. And come to find out this summer from reliable sources that she left our school. :slight_smile: After teaching just one year.</p>

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<p>AP Bio teacher; not chem. ;)</p>

<p>I think she knows a lot more about Bio than Chem, so after these first two weeks, it shouldn’t be all that important.</p>

<p>The good news is that none of the stuff that I talked about was on the test today. It was easy. Although there was one question that had a picture of H3O+ and asked what ion was that… nobody who didn’t take Chem would know that; she didn’t talk about the synonymity (sp?) between H+ and H3O+.</p>

<p>Meh… oh well.</p>

<p>HGFM and BWS, thanks for the responses. I’ll think that’s what I’ll do next time.</p>