chemistry--logic or memorization?

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sgrnspc

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so i was told today by an MCAT teacher that i only had good test taking skills and had no real basic chem knowledge. now, i was an chem major as an undergrad, have tutored many people in it, and got an 11 on my PS. i prefer reasoning out my chemistry than just plain memorizing... this women clearly disagreed by questioning me on almost every stupid little chemistry fact...

this made me ponder, am i the only one who thinks through chemistry instead of memorizing it?? and on the mcat, shouldn't logic be as important (perhaps more) than plain memorization??? when i took the mcat, i looked at the chem section and thought: i have so much more to memorize for bio & phys, why not just make this logical than more facts to know....

am i alone in this thinking?? (i hate how other people's observations make you question yourself!)
 
sgrnspc said:
so i was told today by an MCAT teacher that i only had good test taking skills and had no real basic chem knowledge. now, i was an chem major as an undergrad, have tutored many people in it, and got an 11 on my PS. i prefer reasoning out my chemistry than just plain memorizing... this women clearly disagreed by questioning me on almost every stupid little chemistry fact...

this made me ponder, am i the only one who thinks through chemistry instead of memorizing it?? and on the mcat, shouldn't logic be as important (perhaps more) than plain memorization??? when i took the mcat, i looked at the chem section and thought: i have so much more to memorize for bio & phys, why not just make this logical than more facts to know....

am i alone in this thinking?? (i hate how other people's observations make you question yourself!)

I identify with your preference for finding a solution via logic and reasoning rather than rote memorization. Obviously you must know that volume increases with temperature but you don't need to remember that this is Charles' law. I just remember it as a fundamental rule and use it to help solve chemistry problems. I too found that much of the MCAT relied on reasoning abilities, often giving enough info in the passage to solve the problem, however a good science background is also crucial as it develops your critical thinking skills. That being said, medical school is A LOT of rote memorization from what I understand. I will definately have to alter my study habits to succeed.

Interestingly, I have the same profile as you. I have not-so-stellar undergrad gpa (chem major) and a better grad gpa (3.7) with a 32 MCAT.
 
sgrnspc said:
so i was told today by an MCAT teacher that i only had good test taking skills and had no real basic chem knowledge. now, i was an chem major as an undergrad, have tutored many people in it, and got an 11 on my PS. i prefer reasoning out my chemistry than just plain memorizing... this women clearly disagreed by questioning me on almost every stupid little chemistry fact...

this made me ponder, am i the only one who thinks through chemistry instead of memorizing it?? and on the mcat, shouldn't logic be as important (perhaps more) than plain memorization??? when i took the mcat, i looked at the chem section and thought: i have so much more to memorize for bio & phys, why not just make this logical than more facts to know....

am i alone in this thinking?? (i hate how other people's observations make you question yourself!)



All about logic and reasoning it out. I got a 14 on PS section and it was not by memorizing. In fact most equations etc I sat down to understand. Through understanding rather then memorizing one will be able to do better then be able to solve just one type of problem.
 
Your teacher is a damn fool. Memorizing works to a certain extent. Using logic and reasoning to solve problems is absolutely crucial to doing well in chemistry (which extends to the MCAT). Would you rather memorize all the formulas you encounter in chemistry and physics? Would you rather memorize every reaction in organic chemistry? Would you rather memorize biochemical pathways? Give me a break.
P.S. I'm a chem grad, can you tell? lol
 
Your MCAT teacher sounds like an idiot, the ability to reason reduces the amount of memorization you have to do, if you can reason out a solution by all means don't bother memorizing the answer.
 
chemistry is about how quick and smart you are. hard work doesnt pay off in gen chem like it does in bio or something like that. its harder to grasp. the people who nail PS are the REALLY just plain naturally smart ones, i tell you.
 
i completely understand that med school has a ton of memorization in it specially with anatomy and such. but i'm talking solely about chemistry--other than memorizing equations that have already been ingrained in your head (like PV=nRT), you can basically reason out most problems. afterall if chemistry is the most logical of the three sciences (bio, chem, phys), shouldn't you mostly use logic to solve it??

it's kinda like you can give a man a fish and he'll eat for a day, but teach him to fish and he'll eat forever... well if you teach a student an equation, he'll learn that problem, teach him to reason things out and he'll learn all problems...

grrr, she really p*ssed me off but thanks everyone for your response. i feel a lot better. 👍
 
Med school is nothing more than a load of memorizing. There's very little to integrate, in terms of info. Just pick up a med school book & you'll see my point. I couldn't see any way to study ahead for it even; its that bad. Its also pointless to a certain extent. There is such a ton of shi-t to memorize, and you forget most of it by the time you hit residency. I'm gonna miss undergrad; maybe I'll take a math or physics book along just to preserve my sanity.
 
crys20 said:
chemistry is about how quick and smart you are. hard work doesnt pay off in gen chem like it does in bio or something like that. its harder to grasp. the people who nail PS are the REALLY just plain naturally smart ones, i tell you.

I disagree. Chemistry, especially general chemistry, is about doing as many problems as you can until you know what you're doing. There really is no place for memorization, aside from simple equations which are easier to solve. It's easier to understand the underlying concept, and apply those ideas. Once you know the formula, it's easy to understand (based on logic) what increasing one value does to another, that sort of thing.

Some concepts are harder to grasp, quantum mechanics for instance, but it only requires reading the section a few times (Yes, more than once. No, the professor's powerpoint slide is not always sufficient.)

It really comes down to your desire to do well and understand. If you truly want to do well, and if you want to understand something, it isn't hard to put forth the effort and do so. Simply telling yourself you're not 'smart' enough to understand only becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
 
crys20 said:
chemistry is about how quick and smart you are. hard work doesnt pay off in gen chem like it does in bio or something like that. its harder to grasp. the people who nail PS are the REALLY just plain naturally smart ones, i tell you.

Gen chem is def overrated. It leaves so much unanswered, you wonder did the authors have ulterior motives when they put that stuff together.
 
sgrnspc said:
so i was told today by an MCAT teacher that i only had good test taking skills and had no real basic chem knowledge. now, i was an chem major as an undergrad, have tutored many people in it, and got an 11 on my PS. i prefer reasoning out my chemistry than just plain memorizing... this women clearly disagreed by questioning me on almost every stupid little chemistry fact...

this made me ponder, am i the only one who thinks through chemistry instead of memorizing it?? and on the mcat, shouldn't logic be as important (perhaps more) than plain memorization??? when i took the mcat, i looked at the chem section and thought: i have so much more to memorize for bio & phys, why not just make this logical than more facts to know....

am i alone in this thinking?? (i hate how other people's observations make you question yourself!)

Your teacher is does not know what they are talking about. I taught and tutored chem for 3 yrs during undergrad and as a result did very well on the PS section. I will tell you what I told my students- if you want to do well, understand EVERYTHING and do many practice problems! Most of it is quite intuitive. The #1 reason people have problems with gen chem is due to their math/analytical problem solving skills.
 
all right all right maybe i was just a ******* but gen chem never "came" to me like other subjects did...hence a couple glaring C+s and an 8 in the PS.
 
sgrnspc said:
am i alone in this thinking?? (i hate how other people's observations make you question yourself!)

It depends on your approach to chemistry:

As a chem major myself, I needed to approach the subject matter logically and understand why things were happening because our classes requre more than just memorizing PV=nRT. If some one asked me cold what Boyle's principle is, I wouldnt remember off the top of my head but I know that pressure and volume vary inversely, etc. The classwork is merely to give chemists a working knowledge that they can take into a lab and experiment with and take into consideration.

In general, (not exclusively) non-chemistry majors taking chemistry just want to survive the courses, learn for the exams and only take an MCAT level of knowledge out of the intro coursework because that's all they are worried about, not getting an understanding of where the information comes from because they'll need to derive the Schrodinger equation for the particle in a box model.

Essentially, it is the difference between chemists training to become scientists, and students of other disciplines training to take an exam.
 
I like chemistry a lot, and I think the periodic table is amazing. I did a lot of studying/memorizing simply because I wasn't that great at it when I didn't.

I'm not so sure about med students simply forgetting everything after the tests, I've met several doctors who no longer practice and still can spout off so much information about random medical things that I'm in awe. 😱

But that's just random people I've met, I'd like to see a study or something about how much doctors forget. 😛 Or about how much they never knew since scientific knowledge advances so quickly.

Either way, don't doctors have to take a test every 10 years to stay licensed?
 
Jon Davis said:
Your teacher is a damn fool. Memorizing works to a certain extent. Using logic and reasoning to solve problems is absolutely crucial to doing well in chemistry (which extends to the MCAT). Would you rather memorize all the formulas you encounter in chemistry and physics? Would you rather memorize every reaction in organic chemistry? Would you rather memorize biochemical pathways? Give me a break.
P.S. I'm a chem grad, can you tell? lol


So u telling me whenever u need to use Vanderwaals equation of ideal gases(P + a/v2)(v-b) = RT u go and derive the whole thing... man thats sick... seriously... people spend their life times deriving these eqautions so u don't have to... come on u can't tell me that memorizing equations in Chem is useless. There are so many things that would be too much of a pain to derive... equalibrium equations... rate laws... etc... I think ur taking an overly glamorous view of chem... 😉
 
crys20 said:
all right all right maybe i was just a ******* but gen chem never "came" to me like other subjects did...hence a couple glaring C+s and an 8 in the PS.

are you strong in math... algebra?
 
here's the thing about equations, the only time to really memorize them is for certain tests, otherwise, just know they exist and look them up when needed. and speaking of tests, there are some equations that you need to memorize for the mcat--no doubt about that. but my point was that you so don't need to memorize things like if k>1, then products are favored, if k<1, then reactants are favored, etc etc etc. they can be easily derived from k= prod/react. i feel its better to teach students how to quickly come up with that other stuff than just make them memorize all states of k. i think this way is actually better too cuz most mcat problems aren't so straightforward. thus if they do get a curveball, at least they'll know a way to solve some of the problems.


stupibname said:
So u telling me whenever u need to use Vanderwaals equation of ideal gases(P + a/v2)(v-b) = RT u go and derive the whole thing... man thats sick... seriously... people spend their life times deriving these eqautions so u don't have to... come on u can't tell me that memorizing equations in Chem is useless. There are so many things that would be too much of a pain to derive... equalibrium equations... rate laws... etc... I think ur taking an overly glamorous view of chem... 😉
 
stupibname said:
So u telling me whenever u need to use Vanderwaals equation of ideal gases(P + a/v2)(v-b) = RT u go and derive the whole thing... man thats sick... seriously... people spend their life times deriving these eqautions so u don't have to... come on u can't tell me that memorizing equations in Chem is useless. There are so many things that would be too much of a pain to derive... equalibrium equations... rate laws... etc... I think ur taking an overly glamorous view of chem... 😉

I think you're taking away something that isnt there. What I'm saying is chemistry shouldn't be about memorization. Anyhow, why can't you just look it up if you need convoluted formulas? Thats why they are PUBLISHED. There is absolutely no need to memorize that formula. If you know what the purpose of the equation is and its priniciples, you should have no problem predicting the end result. If you need to crunch numbers, look it up and do it. I dont even know why I am stating the obvious here. Oh well...
 
sgrnspc said:
so i was told today by an MCAT teacher that i only had good test taking skills and had no real basic chem knowledge . . .
am i the only one who thinks through chemistry instead of memorizing it??

I'm in the same situation. When I first went to undergrad, I learned chemistry by rote. That was the way it was taught to me and that was the way I thought it should be approached. But now I'm back in school and find that learning chemistry requires a different approach -- one that is focued on problem solving skills that can be applied. Hence, rather than just memorize stuff, I find that a problem-solving approach works better. I just had a test this morning, and the professor put a "NEW PROBLEM" on the test, totally different than any on this practice tests. But using a 'work it out' approach, I think I got it right.
 
How do you rationalize any logic from something like the Ideal Gas Law? That's why I think chemistry can be boring. It is a bunch of formulas you have to apply without understanding much. If the MCAT would give you all the formulas, then you could say that chemistry was a LOGIC and SMART test. But with all those formulas it becomes a boring memory game.
 
so i was told today by an MCAT teacher that i only had good test taking skills and had no real basic chem knowledge. now, i was an chem major as an undergrad, have tutored many people in it, and got an 11 on my PS. i prefer reasoning out my chemistry than just plain memorizing... this women clearly disagreed by questioning me on almost every stupid little chemistry fact...

this made me ponder, am i the only one who thinks through chemistry instead of memorizing it?? and on the mcat, shouldn't logic be as important (perhaps more) than plain memorization??? when i took the mcat, i looked at the chem section and thought: i have so much more to memorize for bio & phys, why not just make this logical than more facts to know....

am i alone in this thinking?? (i hate how other people's observations make you question yourself!)
Chemistry BS here. I always liked to say that I only really know 3 things about chemistry. The rest of the degree is the ability to apply it. Rationalization over memorization all the way.

in fact the memorizers are the ones who think O-chem is the hardest.... mostly because true memorizers only make it that far 😉


EDIT:

awww dammit.... didnt see how old this thing was.... fail
 
How do you rationalize any logic from something like the Ideal Gas Law? That's why I think chemistry can be boring. It is a bunch of formulas you have to apply without understanding much. If the MCAT would give you all the formulas, then you could say that chemistry was a LOGIC and SMART test. But with all those formulas it becomes a boring memory game.

After you take physics you will realize PV=nRT is really a conservation of energy equation. Pressure x Volume is a statement of how much energy is stored in moving molecules, and nRT is a statement about how much energy is present in matter that is wiggling at a certain temperature. It's a beautiful equation, really.

Come join us in the MCAT Q+A forum if you want to discuss this further.
 
After you take physics you will realize PV=nRT is really a conservation of energy equation. Pressure x Volume is a statement of how much energy is stored in moving molecules, and nRT is a statement about how much energy is present in matter that is wiggling at a certain temperature. It's a beautiful equation, really.

Come join us in the MCAT Q+A forum if you want to discuss this further.

it's a trap
 
I felt like I did much better in college chem than high school chem because in high school I just tried to memorize everything. I remember having a breakthrough moment in my first chem class in college where I realized that I actually *got* it. I DEFINITELY think reasoning was important for chemistry in college, and for the MCAT (isn't knowing how to reason well even if you don't know the answer part of test-taking skills?).

For med school though, I have also heard it is just tons of memorizing.

didn't realize how old... haha
 
After you take physics you will realize PV=nRT is really a conservation of energy equation. Pressure x Volume is a statement of how much energy is stored in moving molecules, and nRT is a statement about how much energy is present in matter that is wiggling at a certain temperature. It's a beautiful equation, really.

Come join us in the MCAT Q+A forum if you want to discuss this further.

But you still have to memorize no? In Physics, although not always desirable due to time constraints, you can infer a bunch of formulas from a single one. But chemistry, there are so many formulas for all kind of things... 🙁
 
But you still have to memorize no? In Physics, although not always desirable due to time constraints, you can infer a bunch of formulas from a single one. But chemistry, there are so many formulas for all kind of things... 🙁

those are only for the people who cant flex some logic on it and just derive equations each time from a limited subset.
 

You linked to another of your nonsensical posts.

To your question about unit conversions, it's a moot point. The mcat and almost all of medicine uses the metric system. Tbr just includes it to give you perspective into roughly how much certain quantities are. For example, you know that a meter is roughly 3 feet. If you know that a mile is 5200 feet, you should be able to figure out that there are roughly 1700 m, or 1.7 km in a mile.
 
So u telling me whenever u need to use Vanderwaals equation of ideal gases(P + a/v2)(v-b) = RT .. 😉

If you understand the equation as a correction to PV=nRT it is, that is form, derivable. PV=nRT is for point particles. Since actual particles have volume availbale space for particles to move around is less: you make a correction to V by subtracting b. PV=nRT also assumes that particles don't repell or attract each other. There is attractive force which will reduce the pressure reaquired to keep them confined: so you add the term so required presure reduces. These are the deep things you should remember.
 
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Watch out for this guy. Got an 11 on physical sciences, might as well give him a PHD.

I wonder what specialty he ended up matching to.
 
Wasn't PV=nRT derived from U=w+q? I dont remember pchem well...

Well. Right way to derive it is from kinetic theory of gases. You, of course, have to use conservation of momentum and energy. To get to equation of state you need more: How do the atoms interact? If you assume that collisions are elastic and there is no long range interaction you get PV=nRT.

If, however, you say that interaction is some thing like van der walls force you get the other equation. There are so many states of matter. Too rich t come from just conservation principle. You need what is the interaction. Basically absolute temperature T cannot be properly defined without quantum statistical mechanics, and then if you take helium at very low temperature, that is very low average energy, you come with amazing states of matter like Superfluids; but you need quantum statistics which is wierd.

If you put not just one element but whole gamut of periodic table, and under right condition you get living matter: Cats, Eartworms, and even Humans.
 
Well. Right way to derive it is from kinetic theory of gases. You, of course, have to use conservation of momentum and energy. To get to equation of state you need more: How do the atoms interact? If you assume that collisions are elastic and there is no long range interaction you get PV=nRT.

If, however, you say that interaction is some thing like van der walls force you get the other equation. There are so many states of matter. Too rich t come from just conservation principle. You need what is the interaction. Basically absolute temperature T cannot be properly defined without quantum statistical mechanics, and then if you take helium at very low temperature, that is very low average energy, you come with amazing states of matter like Superfluids; but you need quantum statistics which is wierd.

If you put not just one element but whole gamut of periodic table, and under right condition you get living matter: Cats, Eartworms, and even Humans.

I'm like 90% sure we derived it using a variety of assumptions and conservation of energy. O well, too lazy to look it up, so I'll just take your word for it.
 
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