Thursday night, and my chemistry book is open on a page of equations that all balance and none of them explain anything.
I can balance an equation now. That part is a rule, and I like rules. Count the atoms on the left, count them on the right, move the numbers in front until both sides agree. It is like checking a receipt. The books must balance before you hand them in.
The difficult part is everything the balanced line does not say. It does not say why the reaction happen. It does not say if it will be fast or slow, hot or cold, or if nothing will happen at all when I mix the two things in the tube. Two chemicals can have a perfect equation between them and still sit in the beaker doing nothing. That is the hardest idea in the subject for me so far. The maths is finished. The chemistry has not started.
The words are another difficulty. I learn a metal in Chinese. Then I learn it in English. Then chemistry give me a third name. Iron is Fe. Potassium is K. Sodium is Na. Nobody say ferrum or kalium out loud, but the exam will. For an ESL student this is a special kind of tired. I am not only learning the science. I am learning two old languages on top of it.
Then there is the remembering. Flame tests. Colours. Which gas turns limewater cloudy. These are not hard ideas. They are many small facts, and they do not fit into a rule I can check. In Business, when I forget something, I can work it out from the numbers. In chemistry, if I forget that limewater go cloudy with carbon dioxide, no amount of thinking bring it back. I have to carry it.
The one idea I really like is activation energy. It is the most Business thing in the whole subject. Before a reaction give you anything back, you pay something first. A sparkler just sit there until a flame lend it the money. Even a reaction that ends up giving out heat still want its starting cost first. I think about my commissions in the same way. I paid for pens, and for a lot of drawings nobody ask for, long before the six thousand yuan arrived.
Our titration practical is on Thursday. I am told that one drop too many turn pale pink into dark pink, and dark pink is not the same as pink. I will find out.