So, is this going to help me in my life?

A lot of the time, we have to appreciate that, no. This particular thing may not assist you in what you end up doing a fter you leave school. I’m not going to convince you that after you leave school you will constantly be needing to factorise a quadratic equation or apply the pythagoras theorem to situations. You might, but highly likely you will not. But… the skills you are having to use to be able to factorise quadratic equations or apply the pythagoras theorem you will almost certainly find helpful.

You may not realise when these skills have helped you, but every time you learn a new skill or fact, your brain makes new connections and the more you practise this skill, the stronger the connections become. These connections are flexible. You are not only learning how to factorise a quadratic equation, but you are also learning how to solve problems and understand symbols and patterns. The more different skills you learn, the more adaptable you become and the more able you are to solve a multitude of problems. You may notice that the smart kid in school who gets straight As also often comes up with novel solutions to problems that are completely unrelated to anything taught in school.

Learn it faster

You also just get better at learning, so when you have to learn something new, you learn it faster. I was never very interested in French at school until I went to France and actually used the language to communicate with someone and buy a cream cake from a shop somewhere in Paris! It was awesome! Years later, I travelled around Asia and learnt many Asian languages. The first one took me a while to pick up, the next I picked up more quickly and so on. Later in life, I have had to learn computer languages and I picked them up quickly because it was similar to learning a linguistic language. Learning languages also helped me to notice how my own language is constructed and how it uses various rules to convey meaning.

Learning can be fun!

If you really immerse yourself in the learning process, it can be a lot of fun. Try not to think too much about the looming tests, exams and coursework all of the time, and enjoy learning for learning’s sake. I might hear some interesting thing on TV, or read an interesting book and I don’t really think “Do I really need to know that sharks can detect magnetic fields? How will that help me?” I just find it interesting. It’s fun. 

But… Don’t forget the exams!

Ok, so you’re learning something that you don’t see the point in and you are trying to find it interesting, but you just can’t. Well, let us not forget completely that you do have these exams coming up and while they may be stressful, the qualifications they lead to are quite useful little things!

With these simple A4 pieces of paper, you can open up doors! Metaphorical doors that is… They are only bits of paper. It’s important to not pigeon hole yourself and think ‘I must get this grade or that grade’, but if you did get such and such grade, you could do this thing or that. So, whether or not you see the point in something, one big point is to increase the chance of opening up those (metaphorical) doors!

Don’t let your mind distract you!

So, next time you see that thought creep onto the centre stage of your mind, just don’t give it any importance. Don’t try to not think the thought. You’ve already thought it! You can’t change something that has already happened and you’ll just exhaust yourself trying. Instead, just think in response, “Hello thought. Not right now thanks, I’m busy.” and then get back to your learning. No need to identify with the thought. Sometimes you can see your unhelpful thoughts as sounds, or maybe another person living in your head. Sometimes this person is helpful, sometimes they just moan! Pay no attention to them and they’ll shut up.

5 REASONS WHY GOOD STUDY SKILLS ARE IMPORTANT 

A bit about the author, Paul H:

Paul is a qualified and experienced Physics, Maths, and Science teacher, now working as a full-time tutor, providing online tuition using a variety of hi-tech resources to provide engaging and interesting lessons.  He covers Physics, Chemistry, Biology, and Science from Prep and Key Stage 3 through to GCSE and IGCSE. He also teaches Physics, Maths, and Chemistry to A-Level across all the major Exam Boards.

You can enquire about tutoring with Paul here

The post Learning: The ‘How is this going to help me?’ thought appeared first on The Tutor Team.

We use assessments ourselves all of the time to assess whether or not someone likes us, or how good a movie is or a song, or band and so on. Assessments are a necessary thing. We learn many things to gain a qualification. We want a qualification to show various people and ourselves that we can do something or other and to what standard. This means some sort of assessment is entirely necessary. Tests are not the only way we can assess, but they are the most common, and most likely you will have to do many in the course of your life. 

So, assessments are just something we have to live with and exams are the most common type of assessment and so let’s learn some tips on how to best get the marks in an exam.

Exam tips to follow during the exam

• To reduce the stress you can imagine the test as something else that you see as less important, but that you still want to do well at such as a video game. Each question is a new end of level boss or challenge. Just do the best you can in each case.
• Keep an on the clock. You know how much time you have and you know how big the test is. Try to move through the test so you will have the right amount of time on all of the questions. It would help to practise this a few times before the real thing by timing yourself doing past papers.
• Keep an eye out for command words before jumping straight in with the answer. (Eg. State, describe, explain.) Different subjects have different command words. Use your revision guide, ask a teacher or a revision website to find out more.
• Ensure you have not missed any questions. Sometimes when it might be completing a table, or a diagram you might not notice the question.
• For multiple choice questions, if you’re not sure which one is right, start eliminating the ones you know are wrong and, if needs be, guess out of the remaining options.
• If you cannot answer the question in around a minute or so, mark it with a symbol of your choice (Maybe an arrow) in the margin and come back to it later. 

Exam Preparation

• Practise past paper questions and mark them yourself to learn how to get marks in different questions. You can also get examiner reports. These write about certain questions in the test and how students tended to lose marks in that question.
• Get familiar with command verbs. Command verbs are verbs at the start of an exam question (e.g describe, identify, explain) that can often give you a clue as to how much detail you might want to put into an answer.
• Practice time management. When completing practice questions in preparation, time yourself and give yourself roughly a minute or two per mark.
• Make sure you know what will be on the paper you are about to sit. For example, what topics and what types of questions. Eg. “Calculator paper 1” might have specific topics and you know you can use a calculator, so you don’t need to practise any mental arithmetic for it.
• Get plenty of rest! Often students prepare and revise too much, so their brains are not able to function properly when trying to understand harder concepts or during the actual exam. Keep an eye on your energy levels. If you are finding it harder than you normally would, maybe you need a break.
• Revise steadily a little bit at a time way in advance of the test by reading over your notes after the lesson rather than spending hours every night in the last couple of weeks before the exam. Imagine you were planning to run a marathon in 1 year. You should start training now. You wouldn’t run everyday in the last couple of weeks before the marathon.

Last Minute Prep

• Eat a good meal before the exam and have a good night’s sleep before the exam.
• Don’t revise too hard the night before, Let your brain be fresh.
  

  

5 REASONS WHY GOOD STUDY SKILLS ARE IMPORTANT 

A bit about the author, Paul H:

Paul is a qualified and experienced Physics, Maths, and Science teacher, now working as a full-time tutor, providing online tuition using a variety of hi-tech resources to provide engaging and interesting lessons.  He covers Physics, Chemistry, Biology, and Science from Prep and Key Stage 3 through to GCSE and IGCSE. He also teaches Physics, Maths, and Chemistry to A-Level across all the major Exam Boards.

You can enquire about tutoring with Paul here

The post Preparing for Exams appeared first on The Tutor Team.

Ok… Actually, most of my students most of the time are like this. Some of my students are a little… less enthusiastic! There are varying levels of enthusiasm amongst students whether in school or managing their own learning in a home environment. So why is this? And also, why do children seemingly not not enjoy learning as often as their parents do? And why do some children love learning and others watch the clock until they can be doing anything else with their time?

LEARNING ONLINE – HOW TO ABSORB INFORMATION

A day in the life of a student

Let us start by understanding what it is like to learn in a school environment for a child. Studies have shown that teenagers’ body-clock prefers them to wake up much later and go to bed much later. This produces the typical lazy teenager stereotype who keeps refusing to get out of bed until the last minute after repeatedly pressing snooze. They might miss breakfast and rush to school still bleary eyed in time for their first lesson. Sleep deprived and malnourished, they are made to sit in rows and listen to someone explain algebra, World War 2 or the different parts of the digestive system. Anxiety builds as they realise they have not been listening for several minutes in a row and now the teacher catches their eye. “Just nod and smile. Look attentive!” they think. “Please don’t ask me a question…”

Distractions and social media

Well, it’s well and good moaning about how hard life is, but that’s not going to fix the problem is it? We all have our struggles and we don’t get anywhere wallowing. So, let’s make sure we get to bed on time, up on time, have a good breakfast and take on the day! Hang on… but oh what’s this? Someone just posted something on Facebook, and there’s this new funny TikTok video people are all talking about and I need to make sure those photos are ok for Instagram and… buzz buzz… Argh!

Social media is no joke. It is a serious issue. It is not all bad of course. There are lots and lots of benefits, but aside from the obvious distractions and very real threats of cyber-bullying, they can encourage a very egocentric outlook on the world.

Of course, social media is not the only distraction, but I think most people agree that it is the main one nowadays. There are a lot of very useful learning tools on the internet and as phone-apps, but that’s not much good if you have to use the very tool you are addicted to to access the learning!

So what’s the solution??

The first thing to do is to realise why it can be hard and to not beat yourself up or, if this is a parent reading, to sympathise with them. So, we accept the situation just as it is and then we formulate a plan of action to move forwards. Here are some suggestions:

• Get a good night’s sleep: I know you are a teenager and your body wants to go to sleep much later and wake up much later, but accept that that may not be an option. You still need to sleep, so get used to it. No phones at least an hour before bed. Ideally no screens. Read, chat, meditate… Relaxing stuff. Avoid bright lights. Make sure you don’t eat too late.
• Get up early enough: Now you have got to bed early enough, you will find it easier to get up early. This will mean a calmer, more stress-free morning to start the day with.
• Eat a good breakfast: Slow release carbohydrates. Avoid high-sugar cereals. They wake you up, but they you’ll crash mid morning and feel tired and hungry.
• Consider giving yourself some distance from your device(s). Notice your environment. Notice who you are with. Whatever you are doing, just focus on doing that.
• In lessons, try and pay more attention to what the teacher is saying. If you notice any negative thought patterns come up, just notice them, smile, and let them go. You may start to notice the same patterns in your classmates. Empathise with them as you have been there too.

5 REASONS WHY GOOD STUDY SKILLS ARE IMPORTANT 

A bit about the author, Paul H:

Paul is a qualified and experienced Physics, Maths, and Science teacher, now working as a full-time tutor, providing online tuition using a variety of hi-tech resources to provide engaging and interesting lessons.  He covers Physics, Chemistry, Biology, and Science from Prep and Key Stage 3 through to GCSE and IGCSE. He also teaches Physics, Maths, and Chemistry to A-Level across all the major Exam Boards.

You can enquire about tutoring with Paul here

The post Why do some people sometime not enjoy learning? Part 1: sleep and distractions appeared first on The Tutor Team.

We spent a bit of time talking about how the reactants of respiration, glucose and oxygen, get to our cells and how the (waste) products, water and carbon dioxide, are carried away from our cells. The transport system which does all of this is our circulatory system. It is our blood which transports it all inside veins, capillaries and arteries. We finished up introducing the thing which pumps the blood around the body, the heart.

WHY WE SHOULD TAKE FLAT EARTHERS SERIOUSLY

The heart

The heart is actually two pumps in one. One pumps blood to the lungs to get the oxygen (and release carbon dioxide) and the second pumps blood around the rest of the body to deliver the oxygen (and collect the carbon dioxide). This means the second pump would pump more strongly than the first as the blood needs to flow a longer way.

In the diagram on the right we see the heart. As you can see there are halves, one is more blue and the other is more pink. In reality the heart is not blue at all and neither is the blood at any point, but it is a colour code for the diagram. Blue means the blood has very little oxygen in it and pink (or red) means it has a lot of oxygen in it.

The two halves are the two pumps I was talking about earlier on. They are called atriums. Notice that the right atrium is actually on the left and the left is on the right? Why is that? It is because if we were doing an operation on someone’s heart, they would be lying on their back facing us. Their left would be on our right and vice versa. 

Circulatory System

If you use the diagram of the circulatory system on the left with the diagram above we can see where the blood goes a little more easily. The right atrium pumps blood to the lungs via the pulmonary artery. Here is  where it can collect oxygen and drop off carbon dioxide. Once it has done that it flows back into the pulmonary vein in the left atrium. Notice before it gets into the lungs the diagram shows the blood as blue to show a lack of oxygen in the blood and after the blood is red to show it now has a lot of oxygen in the blood. The left atrium now pumps the oxygenated blood around the rest of the body. The blood then flows back, now depleted of oxygen, into the vena cava in the right ventricle ready to repeat the cycle.

The lungs

When the blood gets to the lungs to collect oxygen, how are the lungs suited to help with this process? We know that when we breathe in our lungs fill with air, but what else? What are we doing when we breathe in? How do we pull the air from the outside into our lungs?

Breathing is an interesting action. We mostly do it automatically when we’re concentrating on some other activity and even when we’re sleeping. However we can deliberately breathe as well. Most actions are either one or the other.

How does it work?

Whether we breathe deliberately or automatically, what we are doing is contracting our diaphragm which pulls down and forces our lungs to increase in size. As the lungs expand more air is drawn in to fill the space. Intercostal muscles also work to help expand our rib cage to help. The air flows into our nose or mouth and then down our trachea.

Half goes to the right and half to the left down bronchi (one bronchus, two bronchi). Then the bronchi split up into smaller tubes called bronchioles. The tubes keep splitting up like trunks, branches, sticks and twigs of a tree, until they reach very very tiny little air sacs called alveoli. Because the tubes split up so many times, one breath can reach many many alveoli and at this point the oxygen in the air is able to get into the blood by a process called diffusion. Basically, there is a higher concentration on one side than the other, so oxygen flows into the blood from the breathed in air.

I could talk further about how digestion works to get the glucose into the body and what else the blood does and some of the other adaptations of the breathing system, confusingly called the respiratory system, as it is all of course connected, but I’ll leave it there for this 2 part series. I hope it helped clear up a few things and I shall look forward to writing the next post soon!

5 REASONS WHY GOOD STUDY SKILLS ARE IMPORTANT 

A bit about the author, Paul H:

Paul is a qualified and experienced Physics, Maths, and Science teacher, now working as a full-time tutor, providing online tuition using a variety of hi-tech resources to provide engaging and interesting lessons.  He covers Physics, Chemistry, Biology, and Science from Prep and Key Stage 3 through to GCSE and IGCSE. He also teaches Physics, Maths, and Chemistry to A-Level across all the major Exam Boards.

You can enquire about tutoring with Paul here

The post Respiration (part 2) – The heart and lungs appeared first on The Tutor Team.

Respiration (part 1) – transporting the goods

Oxygen is a very reactive element. If you blast a flame with oxygen you will get a very dramatic effect! Metal items exposed to oxygen, rust and fall apart. These reactions may seem inconvenient, but there are some reactions we are grateful for. There is one which occurs inside nearly every cell of our bodies, without which, we would not be alive. The name of this reaction is respiration. There are in fact two types of respiration, but I shall be referring to aerobic respiration in this post, which involves oxygen. I may talk about anaerobic respiration in another post.

Many people confuse respiration with breathing. It is not breathing. However, breathing is necessary for respiration to occur, but so is eating. Let’s explore…

The reaction

Respiration is the reaction of oxygen with glucose. These are called the reactants because they are reacting with one another. Oxygen is very reactive and glucose contains a lot of energy. When the two substances react this energy is released. This is good news for us as we can use the energy released to move, produce heat, grow, repair and many other things necessary for life. The substances produced (the products) are carbon dioxide and water. These are often both called waste products because the point of the reaction was to make energy, not either of these two products.

Transport of goods 

So, now we know what respiration is, why it is important and where it occurs. But how does the oxygen and glucose get there? And what about the so called ‘waste products’? Don’t we need to take them away if they’re not being used. Er… yes. So, we need some sort of transport system. Something to deliver the oxygen and glucose. Blood. That’s right, the red liquid flowing throughout your body as we speak is tirelessly working hard to deliver these goods to different parts of your body and have been doing this since before you were born!

Your blood travels through tubes called blood vessels. There are three types of blood vessels:

1. 1. Arteries: These vessels have thick walls as they carry blood at high pressure and walls need to be able to cope with the high pressure without bursting.

• Veins: These vessels have thinner walls as the blood inside them is of a much lower pressure. The downside of this is that there is a risk of it flowing back in the opposite direction. To stop this, veins have valves which stop the blood flowing in the opposite direction.

• Capillaries: These are the smallest of the blood vessels and the final stop delivering the goods. If you want to get oxygen and glucose to the cells, this is where it happens. The walls are extremely thin (one cell thick) so as the substances can easily pass through them and into the place it is trying to get to.

A VIEW INTO THE FUTURE (PART 1): SPLIT BRAINS, GUT BACTERIA

The pump

So, just to summarise so far… 

• There is a chemical reaction happening inside (nearly) every cell in your body called respiration.
• The point of this reaction is to produce energy.
• The reactants required for this reaction to occur are glucose and oxygen.
• The products of this reaction are carbon dioxide and water.
• The blood carries the glucose and oxygen to these cells in blood vessels.
• The blood also carries the products away from the cells and eventually out of the body.

So, what keeps the blood flowing so as to deliver the goods? You may already know it is the heart. This is our very own pump which continually beats since before we were born to pump the blood to our lungs and then back to the heart to pump it a second time around the rest of the body. When it pumps the blood to the lungs it has to pump quite hard, but not as hard as when it pumps around the rest of the body.

Any blood leaving the heart will be under a high pressure as it has just been pumped by the heart and so guess what type of blood vessel it will be transported in? An artery. Think A for artery and A for away. Blood flowing back to the heart will be under a lower pressure and so will be travelling in… veins! Think into the heart; and vein.

Why does it go to the lungs first? To get the oxygen and drop off the carbon dioxide. When you breathe in, the air you breathe in contains 21% oxygen. That oxygen passes into the blood as it makes its way to the lungs and when you breathe out you will breathe out more carbon dioxide as it leaves the body.

Next post I shall be writing a little more about the heart, lungs and circulatory system and also about how the glucose gets into the body.

5 REASONS WHY GOOD STUDY SKILLS ARE IMPORTANT 

A bit about the author, Paul H:

Paul is a qualified and experienced Physics, Maths, and Science teacher, now working as a full-time tutor, providing online tuition using a variety of hi-tech resources to provide engaging and interesting lessons.  He covers Physics, Chemistry, Biology, and Science from Prep and Key Stage 3 through to GCSE and IGCSE. He also teaches Physics, Maths, and Chemistry to A-Level across all the major Exam Boards.

You can enquire about tutoring with Paul here

The post Respiration (part 1) – Transporting the Goods appeared first on The Tutor Team.

Welcome back to the second part in this two part series on how to be scared of the future!

In my last post I showed with some examples of split brain patients, gut bacteria affecting your personality and other day to day observations that the hard line we imagine between us and the rest of the world is actually a little bit blurry it would seem! In this post we shall continue along these lines and think about where this could lead with the kind of technology which has been coming out in the past decade or so.

Wearable technology

Nowadays we already have a bit of wearable technology. Google glasses allow to experience augmented reality in which notifications, weather, messages and so forth appear over the top of what you can see through the glasses. smart watches measure your pulse, monitor your sleep and help you track your overall fitness. We even have implants which contain information such as payment apps implanted in your hand, or monitor your blood sugar level and pace-makers have been around for a long time now. We even have bionic limbs which can be controlled by thought!

LEARNING ONLINE – HOW TO ABSORB INFORMATION

Combining brain with technology

Maybe in the future, an implant may be possible in your brain. Crazy! Never! Actually, it is already happening! Click here to see an article about Bain-computer interfaces and brain monitoring implants as well as implants which release proteins in your brain for those in need of such medical treatment. All of this is for medical purposes, but it does not seem too far fetched to imagine the use of this technology becoming more mainstream. Maybe a microchip in your brain could help you access the internet with thought! So, we could ‘think’ what the weather is tomorrow, or what year the battle of Hastings took place. We might also be able to write an email by thought.

Next, maybe many people get this technology. It becomes normal, like mobile phones, or social media. So, you could have virtual chats with a friend anywhere in the world, by just thinking. We must realise that we may often think in words and sentences, but not always. Sometimes we think without words or language. On those occasions, currently we cannot communicate those ideas without translating into language, and so often there are arguments and people do not understand one another.

All of this would change with this technology. In fact, you and your friend may cease to feel like two separate people. It may be possible that your thoughts and your friends’ thoughts could be difficult to tell apart. This is similar to the two hemispheres inside your brain which constantly communicate with one another and so make it seem as if you are one person. Now you and your friends may seem like one person! That feels a little strange!

The Borg

Eventually, this could spread to larger groups than just two. Maybe the whole world. After all, language is no longer a barrier, because we are communicating via thought. At this point, we would become a superorganism. One ‘person’ made out many humans. In the same way as one human is made out of many living cells. This idea was first postulated in Star Trek with the idea of ‘The Borg’

Are we already one super-organism?

We tend to think of ourselves as separate independent people in control of our lives, but in reality we are hugely dependent on millions of people everyday. At least the majority of things we do are dependent on the actions of other millions of people. When we shop for food, when we use technology, when we turn on our lights or buy some clothes, it is only possible because of the work of people we have never met.

Right now as I type this sentence it is only possible for the people who maintain the National grid, the people who maintain the internet, the people who helped to develop the internet in the first place, the people who made my computer, who mined the materials needed for the computer, the books I read which inspired me to write what I wrote, the people who enabled me to buy the book by making, distributing and advertising it.

Meanwhile, the services we all provide in our jobs and in life are helping countless people to do the things they want to do. We rarely reflect on this fact and maybe we should a little more often. In a way, we are already a super organism without realising.

A VIEW INTO THE FUTURE (PART 1): SPLIT BRAINS AND GUT BACTERIA

A bit about the author, Paul H:

Paul is a qualified and experienced Physics, Maths, and Science teacher, now working as a full-time tutor, providing online tuition using a variety of hi-tech resources to provide engaging and interesting lessons.  He covers Physics, Chemistry, Biology, and Science from Prep and Key Stage 3 through to GCSE and IGCSE. He also teaches Physics, Maths, and Chemistry to A-Level across all the major Exam Boards.

You can enquire about tutoring with Paul here

The post A view into the future (Part 2): Technology appeared first on The Tutor Team.

In Physics there are many topics which are a little strange and do not seem to match how we experience the world normally.

Inspiration for this post came from:

• Yuval Noah Harari and his trilogy of books about us humans (Sapiens, Homo Deus and 21 Lessons for the 21st Century)
• The Borg from Star Trek
• A video explaining the experiments on ‘Split Brain’ patients by CGP Grey.

Split Brain patients??

It turns out that our brains are made out of 2 parts, the left hemisphere and the right hemisphere. The left controls the right part of the body and receives information from the right and vice versa with the right hemisphere. Crucially, the left hemisphere controls pretty much all of verbal communication. The right hemisphere does not contribute to what we say, but it does hear, using the right ear. Normally these two hemispheres are connected and are in constant communication with one another, but…

Treatments for epilepsy were conducted in the past in which the two hemispheres were disconnected which helped to reduce seizures by keeping the disruption within one hemisphere. The experiment worked brilliantly, except that the patients of these treatments experienced some strange side effects. At times it seemed that the left arm seemed to have a mind of its own. It would choose a different item of clothing, or a different type of food from the fridge than what the patient intended. After careful experimentation it seemed that the patient’s personality had been split into two. One ‘person’ existed in the right hemisphere and the other in the left. Scientists conducted experiments with volunteers to conclude this, which can be seen in the video I linked to above.

Are we so different from split brain patients?

It would seem then, that we therefore are already two people in our heads, but in direct and constant communication with each other so much so, that we feel like one person. In groups of people, this phenomenon is also observed. A group of people will seem to have one personality, when viewed in a general way by looking at the behaviour of the group. A similar thought experiment could take place with hives of bees, which have ‘hive intelligence’ or armies of ants. In a similar way, humans working on huge projects, such as building a rocket and landing it on the moon are very very unaware of how their individual jobs connect with the overall aim and as such the overall personality and intelligence of the group is different to that of an individual within the group.

LEARNING SCIENCE – CAN IT MAKE YOU HAPPY?

This is me, that is not me!

We all have an idea of stuff is us and what stuff is not us. My head is me, my glasses are not me. My skin is me, my red blood cells is me, the food is not me… But, it will become me at some point. At what point does the food you eat become you? When it enters your mouth? Or when the nutrients go into your bloodstream? When the nutrients make it to your cells? What about the bacteria living in your digestive system? They have entirely different DNA, so cannot possibly be you, right? Did you know that they affect how your brain works, even down to your very personality? If you had different gut bacteria, your personality would be different, so would that mean that ‘you’ are different?

5 REASONS WHY GOOD STUDY SKILLS ARE IMPORTANT 

Stop! My brain hurts!

This is starting to get a bit weird, right? We think we know what we are and what is not us, but when we breathe, the oxygen in the air becomes us and bits of us become carbon dioxide which makes up the air. Plants then take that in during photosynthesis and in no time at all it is now part of the plant.

We may eat some plants, and/or animals which ate some plants and they then become part of us. Meanwhile, the bacteria living inside of us are affecting our behaviour and personality. In fact, the mitochondria that live inside of all of our cells in our body used to be classified as an entirely separate organism, but at some point in our evolutionary history it invaded a cell and since then they have existed together. And now it turns out you can even chop a brain in half and you get two people living inside one human!

Ok. This is too much for now! Next post I shall build on this idea and suggest what is in store for us in the distant future as we start to combine with technology!

A bit about the author, Paul H:

Paul is a qualified and experienced Physics, Maths, and Science teacher, now working as a full-time tutor, providing online tuition using a variety of hi-tech resources to provide engaging and interesting lessons.  He covers Physics, Chemistry, Biology, and Science from Prep and Key Stage 3 through to GCSE and IGCSE. He also teaches Physics, Maths, and Chemistry to A-Level across all the major Exam Boards.

You can enquire about tutoring with Paul here

The post A view into the future (Part 1): Split brains, gut bacteria appeared first on The Tutor Team.

So, in this series I want to go over what intermolecular forces are, the three types to consider and what sets each type apart from the other.

Firstly, what do we mean by intermolecular forces? The inter part essentially means between, as in international travel means travel between nations. So, intermolecular forces means forces between molecules, not forces within molecules. That is quite important. Forces within molecules, in other words The regular kind bonding such as covalent, ionic and metallic, is referred to as intramolecular forces. We are looking at the forces between one molecule and another nearby molecule. These forces are much weaker than the bonds within a molecule.

The three types of intermolecular forces

So, the three types we shall look at are:

1. Van der Waals (often referred to as vdw)
2. Dipole-dipole
3. Hydrogen bonding.

First thing to note here is that I have arranged them in order of strength, with the weakest being at the top with Van der Waals, going down to the strongest at the bottom with hydrogen bonding.

THOUGHTS THAT CAN STOP YOU STUDYING

The weakest of the three: Van der Waals

Let’s imagine a molecule, for example chlorine, Cl2. The two atoms are bonded by a single covalent bond, but the electrons are constantly moving around and at any one time, they could be more around one atom than the other. We could say that the electron density is higher around one atom than the other. The diagram below shows the electron density is higher around the right hand atom within the molecule.

As a result, the part of the molecule that has a lower electron density will have a slightly positive charge. The other side will have a slightly positive charge.

We refer to this mis-distribution of charge as a dipole. In this case, it is a temporary, or induced dipole because no sooner do we have an arrangement like the one above, the distribution could change and so the dipole would reverse. Of course, there would be moments of no dipole and the strength of the dipole will fluctuate also.

So, two neighbouring chlorine molecules may feel a slight attraction to each other as the slightly positive area of one molecule is attracted to the slightly negative area of another.

Something which is often not explained here, is that a randomly occurring dipole in one molecule causes a dipole in the other molecule, hence the expression induced dipole. If a positive charge from the first molecule approaches the electron cloud of the second molecule it causes the electrons in the second molecule to be attracted to it which causes that part to be negatively charged. The opposite happens if the first molecule’s negative side approaches the second molecule. A similar thing occurs when you charge a balloon by rubbing it on your head and it sticks to a neutral wall. Click here for a simulation of this.

RADIOACTIVITY, NUCLEAR DECAY, RADIATION… WHAT’S THE DIFFERENCE?

How molecular size affects things

It must be no surprise that molecules with more atoms in them would have stronger van der Waals forces, as they have more surface area. However, less obvious is that molecules with larger atoms in them also have a stronger van der Waals. This is because more electrons are able to move around the molecule and lead to a stronger dipole

Saturated and unsaturated fats

Another interesting case study is saturated and unsaturated fats. Saturated fats include most animal fats and occur in butter and lard. They also occur in coconut oil You may have noticed that they are always solid at room temperature. Whereas unsaturated fats, such as olive oil and other vegetable oils are liquid at room temperature. This must be because room temperature does not produce enough energy to melt saturated fats, but does to melt unsaturated fats. Why is this?

Unsaturated fats, due to the double bonds, tend to have kinks in them and not lie flat next to each other, whereas saturated fats are more straight which means they can lie very close to one another. Because of this, the saturated fats get closer and can produce larger van der Waals forces. See the diagram below.

As you can see, the double bond bends the molecule and they are less able to lie close together.

Summary

So, I have gone over the first of the three intermolecular forces, which is also the weakest. The next one is usually called dipole to dipole, but more specifically involves permanent dipoles. In van der Waals, it is technically a dipole to dipole also, but in this case they are randomly occurring dipoles, or more accurately: One randomly occurring dipole inducing a dipole in another molecule leading to an attractive force.

I hope that cleared up a little bit of confusion on the topic. I shall see you in the next post!

A bit about the author, Paul H:

Paul is a qualified and experienced Physics, Maths, and Science teacher, now working as a full-time tutor, providing online tuition using a variety of hi-tech resources to provide engaging and interesting lessons.  He covers Physics, Chemistry, Biology, and Science from Prep and Key Stage 3 through to GCSE and IGCSE. He also teaches Physics, Maths, and Chemistry to A-Level across all the major Exam Boards.

You can enquire about tutoring with Paul here

The post Intermolecular forces 1: Van der Waals appeared first on The Tutor Team.

The Kekule structure of Benzene

So, this is how we once thought Benzene looked. It would be called cyclohexa-tri-ene. We knew it was a ring of 6 carbon atoms with a hydrogen on each one, so this is how we theorised it must be. This structure is called the Kekule structure of Benzene, after August Kekulé. The model is wrong, and you’ll see why soon, but you can see why we used to think this.

Each carbon has 4 bonds, each carbon has one hydrogen. Everything seems fine, but even here there is something a little strange… The double bonds could, in theory, actually be in two different positions, and why be in one, rather than the other? See below for a diagrammatic explanation:

Incidentally, the name of the type of chemistry which looks at chains of atoms, as in most of organic chemistry, is called aliphatic, in case you start to see that word anywhere when learning about this.

ARRHENIUS EQUATION

Bond lengths

The bond lengths of C-C bond and of a C=C bond are different. C=C bonds are shorter, but when measuring the bond lengths of benzene, they were found to all be the same length. This is our first big clue that the Kekule structure is incorrect. If the Kekule structure was correct, we should have seen two distinct bond lengths within the ring.

Hydrogenation of Benzene

The final nail in the coffin for the Kekule structure is the hydrogenation of Benzene. Hopefully, you know that hydrogenation simply means to add more hydrogen to a compound. We will imagine this happening with the Kekule structure. If we break all of the double bonds, each carbon atom will be able to hold another hydrogen atom, and so produce cyclohexane. We could do partial hydrogenation, and just break one double bond, but let’s do full hydrogenation for simplicity.

It is important to remember that, when we do this, we break bonds, which requires energy, and then make bonds, which gives out energy. You can think of breaking bonds as an endothermic process and making bonds as an exothermic process. So if it requires more energy to break the bonds, than the energy released to make the bonds, the reaction will be endothermic overall and vice versa for exothermic reactions. Doing a bit of maths, we find that the enthalpy change of adding one molecule of hydrogen to our Kekule structure of Benzene should be -120kJmol-1, and so for 3 molecules as shown above, it should be -360kJmol-1. A negative enthalpy change means an exothermic reaction.

But…

When we measure the enthalpy of the hydrogenation of benzene, it is actually -208kJmol-1. Now, importantly, this tells us two things. Firstly, the structure of benzene needs to be remodelled. Secondly, the actual structure of benzene as more stable than the Kekule structure of benzene, which of course is why it is that structure. Being given the choice, nature would always pick the most stable structure. Why does this finding mean that? Because the reaction is less exothermic. Meaning Benzene is more stable than we thought it was. It must have required more energy to break the bonds within Benzene to then add the hydrogens to make cyclohexane.

CHEMICAL BONDING AND ELECTRONEGATIVITY

So, what is the structure of benzene??

So, it is not single bond, double bond, single bond, double bond all the way around. If we first start off making everything a single bond then each carbon has a free (delocalised) electron which could bond in either direction around the ring. I’ve shown these electrons as dots on the diagram below:

These delocalised electrons form a ring. Actually, they form two rings, one above and one below. See below:

Another go at our first question

So aromatic chemistry is really referring to the study of molecules with this delocalised ring of electrons. Benzene is the most simple molecule with this ring, but aromatic chemistry includes other molecules which are derivatives of benzene and as such still contain the delocalised ring of electrons.

Ok. I hope that cleared up some understanding and I may return to this topic in future posts. Thanks for reading!

A bit about the author, Paul H:

Paul is a qualified and experienced Physics, Maths, and Science teacher, now working as a full-time tutor, providing online tuition using a variety of hi-tech resources to provide engaging and interesting lessons.  He covers Physics, Chemistry, Biology, and Science from Prep and Key Stage 3 through to GCSE and IGCSE. He also teaches Physics, Maths, and Chemistry to A-Level across all the major Exam Boards.

You can enquire about tutoring with Paul here

The post What is aromatic Chemistry? (A-level Chemistry) appeared first on The Tutor Team.

So, before I get into this I should probably make it clear that I strongly believe that the Earth is a sphere and the sun is at the centre of our solar system and basically, all of the science which we generally take for granted.

I do not believe that the Earth is flat, but the title is not just a piece of click bait, (well… maybe a little), I do believe that we should take flat-earthers seriously.

LEARNING SCIENCE – CAN IT MAKE YOU HAPPY?

How do you know anything?

It seems the main sort of argument flat-earthers put forward for their beliefs is that we should only believe what we can collect directly with our own senses and not blindly trust whatever we are being told. Here is a quote from The Flat Earth Society website:

“The world looks flat, the bottoms of the clouds are flat, the movement of the sun; these are examples of your senses telling you that we do not live on a spherical heliocentric world. This is using what’s called an empirical approach, or an approach that relies on information from your senses.”

This sounds like a convincing argument and it is a problem because that convincing argument is like a virus which has spread throughout society in recent years leading to a lot of people succumbing to conspiracy theories. I shall attempt to provide some modest form of remedy in today’s post.

Firstly, we constantly have to trust in things we cannot know directly.

• • • • • • If I run my tap and pour myself a glass of water, how do I know it is not poisoned or full of mind-altering drugs?
          • If I buy some food from the shop, how I do know it is good for me and not going to make me ill?
          • How do I know  matter is really made out of atoms like my teacher tells me?

I have to go by what I have been told and use what we can evidence to decide on which possibility is most likely. Who would be poisoning my food and drink and for what purpose? How likely is it that people might do that? Might things seem different if our food and drink was being poisoned? How might things seem if it wasn’t? Looking at how things do in fact seem to us, which one is more likely?

Can we really trust our senses?

Furthermore, if we decide to only trust our senses, well how do we know we can really trust our senses? Have you seen the Matrix? 

Maybe we are all in the Matrix right now!! Even if everything is as everybody claims it is, we know that we cannot entirely trust our senses anyway.

Our memories are not anywhere near as accurate as we think they are. This is why people have arguments so often about how they recollect things occurring in some past events. Lawyers, criminal investigators and judges have learnt that witness eye accounts are not really all that reliable.  We frequently cannot find something we are looking for which is right in front of us. Let’s look at a brief illusion to remind us we cannot trust our senses.

These eggs are all the same colour. I’m not talking about vertical stripes which continue above and below the eggs. I am talking about the lighter colour which makes up the shape of the eggs. That colour is the same in each case. I know this, I’ve just proved it to myself (take a screenshot and play around on Paint for a bit…). But, my senses still tell me they are different even still. I cannot entirely trust my senses.

WHAT IS SEEING? PART 1: HOW MOST PEOPLE ‘SEE’

Direct evidence vs indirect evidence

The so called indirect evidence we get from books and people is not all that different from the so called direct evidence we get from our senses. When I look at my desk and see my hands and keyboard, I am actually applying concepts to what I see. I do not actually see hands and a keyboard. I see different colours and shapes. My brain uses what I have been told over the course of my life to give meaning to these colours and shapes.

So what do we do about it?

We have to realise nearly everything we ‘know’ is just our best guess, given our experience. We can by all means critique things people tell us, and it can certainly be fun and interesting to do your own experiments find out that the Earth is round, for example; but if we only trusted what we observe directly, we are essentially choosing to ignore and eradicate thousands of years of human understanding and knowledge.

Personally, I would rather build on what has been laid down by others, rather than start again.

A bit about the author, Paul H:

Paul is a qualified and experienced Physics, Maths, and Science teacher, now working as a full-time tutor, providing online tuition using a variety of hi-tech resources to provide engaging and interesting lessons.  He covers Physics, Chemistry, Biology, and Science from Prep and Key Stage 3 through to GCSE and IGCSE. He also teaches Physics, Maths, and Chemistry to A-Level across all the major Exam Boards.

You can enquire about tutoring with Paul here

The post Why we should take flat earthers seriously appeared first on The Tutor Team.