Welcome to Mr. Gurung’s World of Science Blog.
As an IGCSE Chemistry, MYP science or IB DP Chemistry student, in this blog you will have the opportunity to challenge yourself, to extend yourself. What you will find in the pages and, later on, posts are essentially problems of scientific nature. (Elsewhere, you might find them being referred to as “challenging problems” or “enrichment exercises.”) Many of them are dramatic processes–explosions and flares.
Regardless, these exercises will challenge you to apply your knowledge and understanding of scientific concepts and skills and provide solutions to real-life problems of scientific nature.
The challenging problems in this blogs are
- either descriptions of processes, or
- videos of a demonstrations of a discrepant event performed at one time or another in class as part of the “Magic Show” feature of my lessons, and
- followed by one or more questions.
For no other reason than to distinguish them, MYP years 2 and 3 problems are referred to as Puzzlers, while IGCSE Chemistry, MYP years 4 and 5, and IB Diploma Chemistry problems are referred to as Discrepant Events.
Though the expected format of the write-ups are quite demanding, you can always just have a go at providing a solution in the form of comments under the problem page. I’ll obviously be helping you along by providing guiding questions and hints. (My own students, especially MYP science students, would be expected to submit complete write-ups.)
However, the more complete a solution you are able to provide, the more complete an understanding of the materials you will have! So, the depth and the breadth of the solution will be an indication of the depth and the breadth of understanding of the concepts involved. To guide you, every puzzler/discrepant event is accompanied by a set of concepts. You are encouraged to use them in your write-ups.
If you browse a bit you’ll note that some of the problems are common to all four (IGCSE Chemistry, MYP Years 2-3, MYP Years 4-5 and IB DP Chemistry) or a few. When they are common to two or more classes, the expectation in terms of the depth and breath of explanation expected will be different. That will be evident from the grading criteria and/or the accompanying questions. (MYP 4-5 grading criteria for instance requires an evaluation of the solution, which MYP 2-3 grading criteria does not.)
Enjoy!
