this post was submitted on 16 May 2024
715 points (99.0% liked)
xkcd
8452 readers
264 users here now
A community for a webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language.
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
High school chemistry felt less like imperfect modeling and more like alchemy that sometimes yields tangible results. I can't remember specifics anymore but there were many moments where I was like "you're using too many shortcuts and this doesn't make any damn sense mathematically or dimensionally anymore". I know real chemistry is too complex to fit a high school program, but the way it was taught really was like a soft science cosplaying as a hard science.
Also chemists would use any pressure units before they used Pa. mmHg as a unit suffers from congenital defects I can only assume stem from repeated inbreeding.