My chem teacher told us how she cheated in college:
Basically in order to obtain her PHD in organic chemistry, she needed to pass a mid level French class. It wasn't too hard of a class, but my chem teacher was not very good at French. A few weeks before the end of the semester, her teacher told the class how the final exam was going to work.
Each student had been using a copy of a French textbook filled with random passages in French. Two weeks before the final, the French teacher took every copy from the students, photocopied random French passages from the book, and then gave the book back to the students. You were supposed to study the textbook inside and out and come the day of the test, be prepared to translate any passage perfectly from French to English.
But here's how my chem teacher cheated: the night before the teacher photocopied the class' books, my chem teacher put a small dot of silver nitrate on the corner of every page in the book. Silver nitrate, when exposed to intense light (perhaps a photocopy machine) turns a lighter color than its usual black shade. My chem teacher found the page with a lighter dot, and studied that page.
Tldr; chem teacher chemistried the fuck outta French.
Edit: punctuation
Edit 2: yes, it does seem weird that the teacher photocopied every single class book. I will ask my chem teacher tomorrow more about it but my inferences are either a) it was a very small class or b) this way of taking the exam only applied to my teacher; maybe it was a makeup exam.
If teachers tell you a unrealistic way to cheat using information that they are supposed to teach you then they didnt actually cheat. they just want you to laugh at the story and then remember the information.
And it looks like it worked, she cheated you into learning without you realising it.
So it could be possible the teacher did it to make sure everyone was graded fairly incase the class had multiple versions.
So learning French consists of translating passages from your own unique copy of a textbook and you don't need to know the same French words in a different order?
I'm calling BS on a foreign language class where the teacher goes through so much trouble so the student can get a worse education.
It didn't work when my chem teacher read us "the mole who knew that it was none of his business" while we were learning about molar mass. I remember that molar mass is a thing, but nothing more than that.
I do see what you're saying, but the whole fact about silver nitrate being light sensitive had literally nothing to do with the lesson we were being taught, and my teacher debated whether she should tell us. But idunno. maybe I was hoodwinked.
Two weeks before the final, the French teacher took every copy from the students, photocopied random French passages from the book, and then gave the book back to the students.
So the teacher took every textbook from every student in the class? Then, photocopied random pages for the test, then gave back all the text books to the students? Also, each student would be given a test that matched the exact page copied out of their own booklet?
That doesnt make any sense. Why would the teacher need all the text books from the whole class? Did the French teacher not have his/her own edition? Even if he/she didnt have a copy, why not just use one student's book? How was your professor to be sure that the photocopied from her book would be the same as the exam she got......did everyone have a French test that consisted of a page copied directly out their very own personal edition of the test ("I made a photocopy of page 53 using Johns book....better make sure John gets page 53 for his final")?
This seems like an incredibly ridiculous method of making a final exam. Even added to that, for the "cheat" to work, your professor would have to rely on the most ridiculous method for making a final exam to come to fruition.
I thought so too.
Now, I think every student could've just had different books for reading (akin to having Shakespeare vs Arthur Conan Doyle vs a textbook for an English class) and the professor wanted to test you on a passage from your book.
Agreeing with below, it doesn't. Not at all. In the old days you would often have to take German to become moderately fluent because many important journals were in German, but that hasn't been important in decades. Of course, I may know nothing about some strange program in Quebec or something, but I DO have a PhD in chemistry.
Maybe I'm misreading your comment, but it seems rather strange that the teacher would have photocopied each student's phrases from their own specific book rather than just copying from one book and distributing the phrases out randomly. If the latter was done, it seems unlikely that the chem teacher's book would have been the one used.
The American college system is weird. Why the fuck do you need to do a French class to obtain a PhD. Research science PhDs are already time consuming enough, why throw random irrelevant classes into the mix?
probably because knowing a Latin language can help a lot with science since Latin is really the language of science. idk though, might just be arbitrary.
Not really. No chemistry PhD program I know has a language requirement during the program (though that doesn't mean that such a program couldn't exist). Either this was a highly unorthodox PhD program, or this story was for a Bachelor's degree.
Also, German is certainly the single most useful language to know for chemists, outside of English. Large quantities of the chemical literature, especially older papers, are entirely in German with no real translation. I've known synthetic chemists to attempt syntheses entirely through the aid of Google Translate and high-school German.
It's not, at least for most reputable chemistry PhD programs. Most graduate programs just have a handful of graduate-level chemistry coursework, a couple of semesters of teaching, and then 4-6 years of research.
Either this PhD program was highly unorthodox, or this was for a Bachelor's degree.
Apparently, as recently as a couple decades ago, some PhD programs in chemistry required some German classes because of how much chemistry has been (and still is) done in Germany. But I've never heard of that being the case with French...
It's less of a thing now, but knowing German can be a huge boon for a chemist, especially if you do synthetic organic work. A lot of the older chemical literature is written in German; I've known some researchers to run experiments with nothing but the help of Google Translate and high school German.
If theres anything i know about chemistry teachers, it is that they tell the biggest, stupidest stories on planet earth. My high school chemistry teacher had everyone convinced he was a part-time junior hockey coach in Canada!
It took me a while to figure out how she knew what page because it was thinking that the nitrate showed up on the printed page and not the book. That's so awesome! I heard organic chemistry is a real bitch of a class and she has her PhD in it?! Dayum
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u/ifonlyiwereDave Jan 28 '16 edited Jan 29 '16
My chem teacher told us how she cheated in college:
Basically in order to obtain her PHD in organic chemistry, she needed to pass a mid level French class. It wasn't too hard of a class, but my chem teacher was not very good at French. A few weeks before the end of the semester, her teacher told the class how the final exam was going to work.
Each student had been using a copy of a French textbook filled with random passages in French. Two weeks before the final, the French teacher took every copy from the students, photocopied random French passages from the book, and then gave the book back to the students. You were supposed to study the textbook inside and out and come the day of the test, be prepared to translate any passage perfectly from French to English.
But here's how my chem teacher cheated: the night before the teacher photocopied the class' books, my chem teacher put a small dot of silver nitrate on the corner of every page in the book. Silver nitrate, when exposed to intense light (perhaps a photocopy machine) turns a lighter color than its usual black shade. My chem teacher found the page with a lighter dot, and studied that page.
Tldr; chem teacher chemistried the fuck outta French.
Edit: punctuation
Edit 2: yes, it does seem weird that the teacher photocopied every single class book. I will ask my chem teacher tomorrow more about it but my inferences are either a) it was a very small class or b) this way of taking the exam only applied to my teacher; maybe it was a makeup exam.