Thinking+Flexibly

Reflection:

Recently we completed a lab about how the concentration of HCL influences the rate of reaction with magnesium. Part of the requirements were to make the processed data "easily interpretable, organized [with] labeled tables and graphs so that the patterns in the results are made obvious". Now technology is my best friend so I was determined to find the initial rate of reaction and draw the tangent lines using Excel! I spent a large portion of my time in class and out of class researching on google/youtube/any other resources how to draw tangent lines, but I could find nada.

In the end, I decided to let go of my stubbornness, think flexibly, and go back to old-school methods. I printed the graph and drew on the tangents by hand and calculated the slop to find the initial rate of reaction (see below). Returning to these traditional methods saved me a lot of time and taught me not to rely only on technology, because sometimes using Excel can be frustrating and time-consuming.

Of course this incident did not create a phobia of Excel for me! It only forced me to think for flexibly, expand my options.

Here is a picture of the graph I drew by hand with color codings and also the calculated rate of reaction: