Dead Frogs and lattice enthalpies- a crazy day

Yesterday evening we got an invite from Terrence to go to dinner at a churascaria (all-you-can-eat Brazillian). These places are incredible. Firstly you load up your plate with a stupid amount of salad, carbs and meat stews then you go to the meat counter and they bring out kebab stick after kebab stick, each with a leg’s length of roasted meats on it. I never used to be sure when to stop eating and would have to spend hours horizontal in a hammock coaxing away the meat sweats. I am so happy to have finally reached the day when I can say “no” to all-you-can eats!

Instead I opted for the one-time, fill-your-plate and weigh your food. It was like a pick ‘n’ mix for a greedy, carnivorous guzzle-gut.

I am always jealous of my head of department getting to teach all the biology when I’m sat here thrashing out the chemistry. She is a great teacher though. My form class came to me this morning with pots containing large frogs. Guyana is crazy but I soon caught on that they were using them for dissection later and needed to store them in the lab. Two hours and five dead frogs later I was sat in the lab excitedly waiting to see the dissection lesson. One group still had a live frog so I was tasked with gassing it to death with formaldehyde. I felt bad and this was made worse when the stupid frog refused to die and it took at least 10 minutes until I won. The kids loved it. They immediately got stuck in and kept asking if I was queasy as they incised and de-gutted their reptiles.

One group put their frog back together after, proper Frankenstein-style. Some students were saying that this group will become surgeons soon. I think psychos is closer.

I had my first AS level class today. There is 28 of them. I didn’t mess around and gave them a big test paper, whilst spending the whole lesson explaining just how difficult the course is going to be and how hard they are going to have to work. After school I planned their lessons for the next day. AS is fine and we are going to do about relative molecular masses. A Level is another story. They are starting with Lattice Enthalpies, Atomisation Enthalpies and Electron Affiliation. Anyone?!