Things I learn from my students: Lab Report 4

• Beer's law **which says the optical absorbance of a substance at a given wavelength  is proportional to the concentration of the substance, the substance used and length of the light path** can be used to find the presence of certain minerals in crystals. I don't know if this is true or not, but it sounds pretty cool. Like, oh, the impurity that makes my sapphire red is Aluminum. ((I actually have no clue if this is the case. Most of what I remember from Inorganic Chemistry is that diamonds are overpriced, common gem stones, and if he really loves you, he will buy you a sapphire or ruby, you can scare a lot of people if you steal 1 kg of potassium metal and throw it in a lake, especially if you then dump in a bottle of phenolphthalein, and that my professor would not bail me out of jail. However, I digress.))
  
  
• My students are lazy. I give them an option of developing a discussion of phosphate or of Beer's law. Only one student has developed a discussion about anything. Almost everyone else copied their information straight from the lab book. No more options next time, kids. You will tell me about the technique you're using and another application.
   
• Almost everyone turns their work in on time when they have a strict deadline... Maybe they just realize that late work will lower them 3 letter grades. Of course, there's not much you can do when you're going for an F to an F.