MOE Teaching Award

Teaching is fun. Its takes 2 things: Passion and Determination. Passion, for the willingness to care, sacrifice and worry about your student. Determination, for the completion of the job itself, as it is not easy. You have to sit/stand there, and talk. And it seriously makes you thirsty.

Ok, i digress. I actually wanted to talk about the horrific climate we're all experiencing right now. Its like, the inter-monsoon perioed right now, meaning that we're somewhere between the wet season and the dry season. And since the dry season is still not fully fledged, my fellow suffering friends out there, do expect the worse. With Singapore so close to the equator and totally, as in totally surrounded by oceans, its no wonder that the humidity level is soaring. Throw in the high levels of vegetation we have around the island, (plants transpire, releasing more water into the air. This is Biology for Idiots.) and you get air that is seriously saturated with water.

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Question: Which kind of air is denser, one that is saturated with water, or one that is fully dry? [16]

The average person who doesnt really analyse the problem (basically, that nearly all of us) would say that the one saturated with water vapour is denser. But however, the molecular mass of that bent-shaped-molecule-with-a-bond-angle-of-one-hundred-and-four-point-five-degrees is only 18. And that is actually light compared to the rest of the components which make up the air, namely nitrogen (Mr: 28), oxygen (Mr: 32), carbon dioxide (Mr: 44), just to name a few. So therefore, if the air is saturated with water, the relative percentage composition of the rest of the gases would proportionally decrease as well, if Avogadro's Law were to be used. Hence, with an increase in the percentage of water present in air, it would get lighter due to the displacement of heavier molecules from the composition.

But perhaps, we have to take into account the Induced dipole-Induced dipole attraction (aka Van der Waals' forces, albeit being a more specific form.). So maybe the induced dipole-induced dipole attraction would cause the molecules to be closer to each other, thereby increasing the overall density of the gas so such an extent that it actually becomes heavier than the original sample of gas.

Perhaps there could be a glimmer of truth behind all that myths that we have. But for like this, we'll just have to find out through an experiment. Oh well. Till the time comes i guess..


Ok, i forgot wad i wanted to say before that. zzz.

I think i might join bossaball. Looks damn fun..