Ah I have firmly decided that quiet teachers shouldnt teach quiet classes. The deathly silence is too much to bear. Pressuring on us, pressuring on the teacher, plus the overwhelming urge to fall asleep.

Today, my chem teacher spent almost 2 hours on doing just 3 tutorial qns. Woo, even slower than my last chem teacher. -_-. Spent 45 min recapping old stuff, which is a very good idea, except that she covered nothing new, except to copy out stuff from the chem notes; which I think we can read ourselves. More than once I got lost half way, and didnt know which question she was at. Because she tend to wander a bit, and wandering in a soft voice is not a very good idea.

She asked us halfway whether we knew what a reflux was, whether we have seen a setup before. Silence for 1 min. For god sake, how could anyone not know what reflux is, if we have been writing it for exams for the past Promo exams!! Ok, maybe everyone knew what reflux is, but is just keeping quiet. Which is waste of time. The teacher was trying to elicit a response from the class, but the class was observing a moment of silence. Oh man, that is precisely why our old CT got chased away. So, I think either we speak up, or the teacher gives up trying to elicit a response and just plows on throughout the class. No need to ask a question and try so hard to a get an answer. Easier on us too. What the some teachers dont understand is that different classes have different needs. For our class, we are conditioned to listen quietly to the teacher and hurriedly copy tons of notes. We are not conditioned to ask and question and engage in a discussion.

And then, she asked about about the purpose of using a reflux. Hmm, I should clarify that the purpose of the reflux is to prevent the volatile organic substances from decomposing because you want the little molecules to be heated for some extended time. Once you understand that this is the purpose, you will see that to do this is to let the organic molecules evaporate and recondense back. So you need a Liebig condenser with a cap at the top. This way, you can both heat the molecules for extended period of time and still not decompose them.

Quirks of education