The first principle is that you must not fool yourself–and you are the easiest person to fool. So you have to be very careful about that. After you’ve not fooled yourself, it’s easy not to fool other scientists. You just have to be honest in a conventional way after that.
[From “Cargo cult science” by Richard Feynman]
So, How many time you being fool by school?
Noble gases don’t react.
Proton, neutron, electron are fundamental particle of an atom.
The only possible combination of Na and Cl in a compound is 1:1 – NaCl.
This is small example of what we learn from school, but how can you sure that what you learn is up to date?
Science is dynamic. New theory appear, then a group of experiment-addict dig for every evidence and proof it. But sorry, they never teach you up to date.
Let’s see how much lesson that your teacher teach you a wrong things for nowaday. (16 September 2014)
These wrong things in this article is only a example from many wrong things which still teach in high school in Thailand but already update base on many research in many country, I don’t know what I can do with it.
Because their dumbass education system, I accept that I learn nothing useful from school but still go to school for 11 years now. This is a country that learn to earn not learn to live, also never listen to student too!
1. Noble gases don’t react.
What’s wrong : Noble gases do not react chemically with other substances.
For nowaday : Noble gases do not react chemically with other substances except under certain special conditions.
Noble gases, also known as the inert gases, are located in Group VIII of the periodic table. Group VIII is sometimes called Group O. The noble gases are helium, neon, argon, krypton, xenon, radon, and ununoctium. The noble gases have high ionization energies and negligible electronegativities. The noble gases have low boiling points and are all gases at room temperature.
Because the outermost electron shell of atoms of these gases is full, they do not react chemically with other substances. Noble gases are not reactive. This is because they have little tendency to gain or lose electrons.
So, noble gases do not react chemically with other substances. Your teacher say.
But for today, noble gases do not react chemically with other substances except under certain special conditions.
British chemist Neil Bartlett, working at the University of British Columbia, Canada, was not trying to defy conventional wisdom, he just following common logic.
In 1961, he discovered that the compound platinum hexafluoride (PtF6), first made three years earlier by US chemists, was an eye-wateringly powerful oxidant. Oxidation, the process of removing electrons from a chemical element or compound, bears oxygen’s name because oxygen has an almost unparalleled ability to perform the deed. But Bartlett found that PtF6 could even oxidise oxygen, ripping away its electrons to create a positively charged ion.
Early the next year, Bartlett was preparing a lecture and happened to glance at a textbook graph of “ionisation potentials”. These numbers quantify the amount of energy required to remove an electron from various substances. He noticed that xenon’s ionisation potential was almost exactly the same as oxygen’s. If PtF6 could oxidise oxygen, might it oxidise xenon, too?
Mixing red gaseous PtF6 and colourless xenon supplied the answer. The glass vessel was immediately covered with a yellow material. Bartlett found it to have the formula XePtF6 – xenon hexafluoroplatinate, the first noble-gas compound.
Many other compounds of xenon and then krypton followed. Some are explosively unstable: Bartlett nearly lost an eye studying xenon dioxide. Radon, a heavier, radioactive noble gas, forms compounds too, but it wasn’t until 2000 that the first argon compound, argon fluorohydride, was reported to exist at low temperatures by a group at the University of Helsinki, Finland. Even now, the noble gases continue to produce surprises. Nobel laureate Roald Hoffmann of Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, admits to being shocked when, also in 2000, chemists in Berlin reported a compound of xenon and gold – the metal gold is supposed to be noble and unreactive too.
Noble gases are still the least reactive elements, but you can enforce elements to do almost anythings.
2. The only possible combination of Na and Cl in a compound is 1:1 – NaCl.
What’s wrong : The only possible combination of Na and Cl in a compound is 1:1 – NaCl.
For nowaday : The only possible combination of Na and Cl in a compound is 1:1 – NaCl, but in spacial condition – we have Na3Cl, Na2Cl, Na3Cl2 and NaCl7.
Chemistry textbooks say that sodium and chlorine have very different electronegativities, and thus must form an ionic compound with a well-defined composition. Sodium’s charge is +1, chlorine’s charge is -1; sodium will give away an electron, chlorine wants to take an electron.
The only possible combination of these atoms in a compound is 1:1 – NaCl.
Not for today, now we have Na3Cl, Na2Cl, Na3Cl2 and NaCl7.
A team of researchers led by Prof Artem Oganov of Stony Brook University has shown that, under certain conditions, ordinary rock salt can take on some surprising forms that violate textbook rules of chemistry.
The scientists first used new computational methods and structure-prediction algorithms to identify an array of possible stable structural outcomes from compressing NaCl.
They then attempted to verify these predictions, using a diamond anvil to put salt mixed with molecular chlorine or metallic sodium under high pressure.
“We discovered that the standard chemistry textbook rules broke down,” said Dr Alexander Goncharov from Carnegie Institution of Washington, who is a co-author of the study published in the journal Science.
“We found crazy compounds that violate textbook rules – NaCl3, NaCl7, Na3Cl2, Na2Cl, and Na3Cl,” said lead author Dr Weiwei Zhang of Stony Brook University.
“These compounds are thermodynamically stable and, once made, remain indefinitely; nothing will make them fall apart. Classical chemistry forbids their very existence. Classical chemistry also says atoms try to fulfill the octet rule – elements gain or lose electrons to attain an electron configuration of the nearest noble gas, with complete outer electron shells that make them very stable. Well, here that rule is not satisfied.”
NaCl turned into stable compounds of Na3Cl, Na2Cl, Na3Cl2 and NaCl7, all of which have highly unusual chemical bonding and electronic properties.
Their structures were calculated using the crystal structure prediction technique invented by Prof Oganov and called USPEX (Universal Structure Predictor: Evolutionary Xraystallography) making this Russian word, standing for ‘success’, popular around the crystallographers and material scientists.
These compounds not only expand our understanding of chemistry but may find new practical applications in future.
For example, NaCl7, NaCl3, Na3Cl2, and Na2Cl are metals (that explains the apparent violation of electroneutrality since charge balance rules are inapplicable to metals), and only one semiconducting phase of NaCl3 is stable in the pressure range between 250 and 480 thousand atmospheres.
We have NaCl, but in spacial condition – we have Na3Cl, Na2Cl, Na3Cl2 and NaCl7.
3. Proton, neutron, electron are fundamental particle of an atom.
What’s wrong : Proton, neutron, electron are fundamental particle of an atom.
For nowaday : Quark and electron are fundamental particle of an atom.
Proton, neutron, electron are fundamental particle of an atom. Most of people – from elementary, high school to university students still believe this.
It’s fundamental for someone who stuck in school system, now quark and electron are fundamental particle of an atom.
By the 1930s, it was clear that atoms were made up of even smaller particles – protons, neutrons, and electrons, then considered to be the fundamental particles of matter. A proton is a positively charged particle that weighs about one atomic mass unit [1.0073 AMU]; a neutron has about the same mass [1.0087 AMU] but no charge; and an electron has a much smaller mass [0.0005 AMU] and a negative charge. Protons and neutrons make up the tiny nucleus of an atom, while electrons exist outside the atomic nucleus in discrete energy levels within an electron “cloud.”
By 1970 it began to appear that matter might contain even smaller particles, an idea suggested in 1963 by American physicist Murray Gell-Mann (who called the particles quarks ) and independently by American physicist George Zweig (who called them aces ). There are in actuality hundreds of subatomic particles that have been observed, but many of them are unstable.
Quark and electron are fundamental particle of an atom. Remember it!
This is only small example of very big wrong, but what’s that actually wrong is education system.
The biggest problem of education system in my country is they never teach us. Yes, THEY NEVER TEACH US.
You go to school to learn, right? That is the school system’s explicit purpose. So that children can learn.
But what do you learn in school? I mean really? What really stays with you?
Well, you learn to read and write and to do basic math. That’s good. If you’re lucky you might end up with survival level in a second language too. That’s sound reasonable!
This is Richard Feynman comment on education in Brazil long time ago. And now it is serious condition for Thailand too.
“I have discovered something else,” I continued. “By flipping the pages at random, and putting my finger in and reading the sentences on that page, I can show you what’s the matter – how it’s not science, but memorizing, in every circumstance. Therefore I am brave enough to flip through the pages now, in front of this audience, to put my finger in, to read, and to show you.”
So I did it. Brrrrrrrup – I stuck my finger in, and I started to read: “Triboluminescence. Triboluminescence is the light emitted when crystals are crushed…”
I said, “And there, have you got science? No! You have only told what a word means in terms of other words. You haven’t told anything about nature – what crystals produce light when you crush them, why they produce light. Did you see any student go home and try it? He can’t.
“But if, instead, you were to write, ‘When you take a lump of sugar and crush it with a pair of pliers in the dark, you can see a bluish flash. Some other crystals do that too. Nobody knows why. The phenomenon is called “triboluminescence.” ’ Then someone will go home and try it. Then there’s an experience of nature.” I used that example to show them, but it didn’t make any difference where I would have put my finger in the book; it was like that everywhere.
You can learn everything that you actually remembered from school in about three years, just remember it!
How long did it take to learn to read and write and do basic math?
Not long. Four years at most. And if you hadn’t been distracted by the useless stuff combined with that… yeah, two years sounds reasonable.
So school is not about learning. If it was, people would have realised how much more efficiently it could be done. About 10 years of school time, then, are wasted from the perspective of learning.
Free yourself, learn everything your way and explore the world.
May the gravitational force be with you!
Particle Physics Freak life 