Science Eureka sabbatical reflections

Yes, finally. I had been bidding for this sabbatical since last year, and it seems to be quite popular. I wanted to expand my Science knowledge, and hopefully the extra things learnt in this sabbatical can go a long way in my Science learning, not merely for tests. The period of five days was still rather short, but I still had deep impressions of my fun time in this sabbatical. I finally can get to expose to the use of more scientific apparatus and even conduct more experiments on myself. Most of our activities were experiments with occasionally some teachings in between by our Sec 4 seniors. The coverage of the course ranged from biology, chemistry and physics. Most of our activities were rather hands-on, and we learnt mostly from the results of the experiments itself. I just savour that kind of experience. This should be the purpose and process of learning Science! Some of us even mixed up the chemicals in the lab for fun, though it is dangerous to do so. But the very process of exploring Science is indeed irresistible. At the final day of the course , we were even given a mini-quiz on the things that we have learnt over the past few days, most of which consisted of acids in Chemistry. Not too bad, I got 18/20. We were also tasked to give a presentation in our groups on some Science topics that we are supposed to research on, and if I remembered correctly, I did something on bond energy and catalysts. I think I still got the powerpoint so I shall share it. There were also times of frustration during the course, for example, when we got the wrong results for our experiment or when we made a mess of it. I must say that you need some extent of patience and perseverance to go through them. Most importantly, I can get to experience the intuitive learning of Science. I truly felt that Science was not totally about memorisation and that there are different approaches of learning it. Experiments are indeed effective, as you can see the results for yourself, instead of just reading the contents on books. You could thus also remember them more vividly and easily. I think I would definitely join more of such meaningful, fruitful and enriching programs, and hope the school will organise more of them too.

Sabbatical PPT: http://www.mediafire.com/file/fb6uzooh7b23j5y/Presentation1.pptx

Thoughts on my Term 2 Test Performance

One word to express my feelings: Horrible. The score was really under my expectation. After the test and the tremendous effort I put in, I had expected myself to get at least the same score or even better than the last test. But it was dreadful that it turned out to be wrong. The test on light, acid and bases was not as easy as I had taught.I just managed to get onto the bottom line of A1, a 75.5. And out of my surprise, there were 2 perfect scorers in my class. This was the second lowest I got for my Science tests since Sec 1, and this was when I had actually done ample revision this time round.Certainly I had to reflect upon and analyse what exactly had gone wrong this time. Flipping through my test paper after receiving it, I seriously could not believe my eyes. The majority of the mistakes I made were actually out of carelessness.  To raise a few specific examples, it would be MCQ question 13. I actually misread angle of incidence as angle of refraction and got the question wrong. This was only one of the instances, and they costed me dearly. I think one of the factors behind this would be overconfidence. I think that I have been too overconfident over this test and also during the test itself. I thought that I could have gotten most of the questions correct.Maybe it had subliminally caused me to make these errors. Thus, I learnt a valuable lesson, that overconfidence can cause one's downfall, and that sufficient preparation does not always guarantee one success. Life is always so unpredictable. But never mind, I will encourage myself not to give up and continue to strive for greater heights next time. I would certainly be able to get over this pretty soon. GO ON!

Lab lesson on Light

This week, we were introduced to the new topic of light. As I am more inclined to Chemistry, the first time when I heard about this topic, I felt that it was pretty boring. I did not look forward to it in any way. This was also because I had a concept that light was an extremely complicated topic involving many theories and formulaes. But after today's lab lesson, I found that light was actually quite an intuitive topic. I think we have been taking light around us for granted without knowing its background theories. I am glad I learnt that today. We conducted experiments on the properties of light and how it would refract and reflect at different angles to an object or mirror. I am actually quite intrigued, especially when I saw the refraction of light. It was also rather cool, as we did the experiments in the dark.At the same time, our science teacher has taught us some basic information on light and mirror, such as the different types of mirror and the laws of reflection etc. After all these,I felt that I was truly en"lightened". After all , light wasn't so complicated at all. In fact, unlike other topics, I found out that light involves the least amount of memorisation. Know the basic principles, observe carefully and you will be able to handle questions on light. Physics was indeed a livelier subject. I now look forward to an enriching experience of learning a new Physics topic.